Spark268

that makes sense as we came of the gold standard then

thanks for pointing this out ! I took the 700k figure from https://sites.scran.ac.uk/scottmon/pages/the_monument.htm , i think its a government body that's responsible for Scotland's heritage.

may he RIP. Its because my initial attempt was bad, and likely a undiagnosed case of dyslexia also yes it was commissioned by an Act of parliament according to the wikipedia article. I fully agree - one would have to insist that it was fully handmade for a like-for-like comparison, stone masons were likely dime a dozen then, if you excuse the phrase, but finding them now would be prohibitively expensive. A machine made structure would probably cost more than 700k anyway, or indeed any structure of a similar size that lasts 200 years! I believe that metal monstrosity, in a dilapidated part of London, cost in excess of £1bln in 2000 !

Yes, i'm a part of the decimal, spell check dependant generation 😋

Does the pre decimal pound always equal 1 sovereign since it was minted in the early 1800s? So any contrapranious references to £1 mean 1 gold sovereign? I'm asking because, for example the Scott's monument in Edinburgh (pictured on this fine Saturday below) cost £16,154 to build in 1846. According to its official webpage, that's equivalent to approx £712,000 today - presumably this figure has been arrived at by using one of those inflation calculators. However, 16,154 sovereigns, priced at their bullion value of £308, that amounts to £5mln. The 712k sounds a bit low to me, as it took 6 years to build, with heavy stone that had to be carved with intricate details in a prime part of Edinburgh, £5mln seems more reasonable. Am I missing something?

newer members tend to ask the better questions yes i meant bullion by post.

Unfortunately, I did GCSE Double Science, and the subject was not covered at all 😶

have you seen anything with regards to the use of platinum in the production of hydrogen ? The science is still developing but i understand that fuel cell technology might be feasible for larger vehicles such as trucks, buses and trains + that the use of platinum is the most efficient way of producing hydrogen at the moment.

they say a picture is worth a thousand words. Someone looking at the chart that Clive provided can say a thousand things, of which you've said one. Please don't attribute it to me though. that's interesting, it could be due to the level of fuel duty compared to elsewhere, making fuel efficiency a bigger factor in purchasing decision.

if that were the consensus view, then platinum would be priced as much as gold Absolutely - what are you proposing ? I used a random example of royal mail as an example of Reflexivity (Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexivity_(social_theory)#In_economics) . Its where price movements impacts peoples view on the fundamentals and leads to a negative feedback loop. This is what's happening with platinum and the cat theory. Thank you for perpetuating it - its cheaper for the rest of us. When one gives an example of a concept, you can indeed call it random. However, there was nothing random about the investment case for buying royal mail at £1.24bn -its property portfolio alone was worth more than that - however this is not the topic here. I estimate the opportunity cost at being wealth preservation - you can't have all your eggs in one basket. Platinum is also closely related to silver, in that the market is dominated by industrial use , and the platinum market is much smaller. History shows that when gold moves, silver outperforms it, but both are outflanked by platinum - on the way up and on the way down.

premiums are high because supply of the actual metal is tight, presumably because its mostly tied up in cats 😛 its more of a sleeper investment for the longer term.......

a word to the wise: the death of the snail mail has been one of the biggest trends over the past decade. This coupled with industrial strife at the poorly Royal Mail caused it to drop out of the FTSE 100. Forums were full of people pointing out these trends which looked irreversible (such as the ones you've detailed) - and the share price was beaten to a low of 125p at March last year. Then, came along COVID and the rise of ecommerce, and its share price increased by a factor of 5 - granted, the story of postage is not as sexy as gamestop, cryptos or tech stocks, but its performance puts all of these to shame. Going back to platinum: It is a small market, and even the smallest increase in demand, for any reason whether conceivable today or not, at the margin will easily cause it to smash its way past gold parity towards palladium-rhodium levels. The previously large level (as % of annual production) of demand from cat converters has cooled significantly, and that's what has depressed the price. There must be a reason why Platinum is the highest tier of membership level on this forum, as elsewhere

this pretty much sums up the consensus view for platinum, and that's precisely what's priced into the current platinum price. When investing, it makes sense to buy low, not high. Platinum should be parity at least to gold.

it can be hit and miss, over the past few months, i only get email notifications 60-80% of the time.... Edit: my bad, i thought this was referring to the email notification feature when using Royal Mail Special Delivery....

so if you picture a sovereign, and sell the coin, you might make about £10 in profit. Should you then find someone using your picture, you name & shame them, threaten to sue and gain £5000 and another £5000 for removing their name. why bother selling the coin in the first place? The back-catalogue of the TSF trade section/Today I received must be worth billions!

who is John Galt? i think platinum has fallen out of favour in recent years because of its use in the much maligned diesel catalytic converters, with the standard petrol ones preferring to use palladium, and causing a squeeze in that market. This has gone one on for a while now, so factories should have had the chance to retool towards a much cheaper platinum. if the reddit crowd turned to platinum, there would be a squeeze by the end of the month. Squeeze or no squeeze, now's the time to buy low.

the customer service at HGM is quite good, although I was very disappointed in their 'Best Value Sovereigns'. I ordered 4, of which one had obviously been cleaned, and the other was slightly damaged. This is compared to 10 brand new ones, when ordering the same product from BPB.

annual production (dollar value of production, at current market prices) Gold: 90mln ounces ($157.5 bln) Silver: 1,000 mln ounces ($26.5bn) Platinum: 8 mln ounces ($10bn)

its clear how feeds work in general, and the mark-ups that dealers have. However, gold trading is not centralised on any exchange: on LBMA there are trades for unallocated gold in London (for immediate "delivery" in London), and the CME/Globex price reflects bids/offers for the future (for delivery of 100oz bars in the US). Between the two, as seen last March there were significant differences. There are other exchanges, such as the Shanghai Gold Exchange and that in Dubai etc. This is not to mention the significant number of off-exchange private trades. On top of the different exchanges, locations, there are different deliverables (400oz, 100oz, 1oz eagles, 30g Pandas, sovereigns etc). To get a single, universally acceptable gold price, all these factors need to be controlled for, ideally volume weighted to reflect the size of each market. Gold itself might be fungible, but in practice in the way it is traded, it is not, unlike FX, shares or bonds etc. Some sources may take a single source, whilst others may use a blend. Under normal circumstances (such as now), where the differences are negligible, the methodology does not matter, and we are none the wiser. When there are disruptions, large discrepancies occur between sources (~$50/oz) and this becomes apparent in the various sources. I believe it is specifically this that the OP was wondering, and its a good question, as there is very little transparency on precisely what aggregation methodology the feeds are using. To overly simplify, I would guess that dealers in the US use a feed that relies mostly on CME/Globex, and in the UK it will be the LBMA sourced price.

how do you know this?

I can imagine that you feel as half as bad as Isaac Newton eventually did, who after making a small fortune in the earlier stages of the South Sea bubble, went all in at the later stages and proceeded to lose everything in the eventual collapse. Its the nature of the beast.

so in order to summarise: outside of the regulated LBMA fixes, there is no consensus on where the gold prices comes from, or what it is? there may only be one LBMA price for the AM and PM prices, but multiple different sources may display different prices. Not only are the names of the sources propriety but the methodology by which those prices are derived are not known.

the 'owners' of the bank, i.e. depositors/bondholders/shareholders would sell off your mortgage to debt collection agencies and the like - these may pursue the mortgage more aggressive than the bank originally did, and be less bound to offer more affordable deals. This is the situation of the people who had mortgages with Northern Rock --> BBC News - Mortgage prisoners: Key workers in 'financial nightmare'

given that CPI inflation is the lower bound of any estimate of true inflation, its reassuring that Gold has retained its value. On all other measures, it has under-performed significantly, which in other words means that it is an excellent buy, and not so great if you are looking to sell. Past performance is not an indicator of future results. the 80s-00s saw a period of unprecedented structural economic changes, with the following trends that push inflation lower: * Increased productive capacity from China & South East Asia (more supply of goods) * older and aging population in the west (less demand for goods) * Technology, internet, smart phones. Larger retailers (amazon), more cheap fashion items & other knick-knacks The inflation rateis further pushed lower by 'Hedonic' adjustments: so for example, if the iPhone 11 is twice as expensive as the iPhone 4, its impact on the inflation rate is actually pushed lower because it has more features (5 cameras instead of 2, longer attery life etc). The adjustment pushes the stated rate of CPI down a lot.... here's a more detailed description: https://wolfstreet.com/2019/12/05/what-worries-me-about-hedonic-quality-adjustments-cpi/ Also: A university education now costs in excess of 30,000 GBP, compared to free 15 years ago: How has this impacted CPI? who knows !

i don't know if you can tell fake gold by just looking at it, but the bars look quite brassy to me. the bidding has gone up to £50. w.r.t. managed payments: they could have given sellers a slightly better deal and waive/reduce the payment processing fees!