Roy

So i've been staying over at one of my very best friends while my bathroom was having a refit. A gold stacker to be sure so i thought while i'm here i'll be useful. 
So yesterday i found his hidden gold stack! in an old broken vaccum cleaner, wondering if i could fix it i came across about 15 Troy Oz of assorted bullion 9999 gold. So i cleaned it  out and put the gold free cleaner outside for the bin men. 
On his return from work he passed the offending article in the street and didn't notice it. I decided to casually tell him over a beer that the cleaner had been picked up and taken away, but he noticed it had gone when he went to get a bottle of scotch out the cupboard. He went pale then very quiet. Realising he had lost quite a lot of bullion i sat him down and told him that the broken cleaner was gone and that he would have to find another hiding place for his Oz's. He finally realized i had indeed found it and i was holding a little bag with over £22,000 pounds of bullion in it.
Not even a little angry he went away a hide it somewhere else in the house and said i bet you can't find it now.
Thankfully my bathroom will be ready on saturday!

Just wanted to share what was like when the inflation in my Eastern European country when inflation reached 1000% in 1997. Don’t know if that will happen in the U.K. but everything that happened over the last 2-3 weeks reminds me of that period 
to be precise, the inflation was long 50-60% over 4-5 years and in 1997 it hit 1000% so was not sudden shock 
1. Some goods disappear (cooking  oil, gasoline, meat, cheese, tomatoes, alcohol) Bread and some key vegetables could be found but because government organised rationing. I was queuing for oil 1-2 hours…
2. Salaries were paid weekly and after a while daily (once you get your salary, you rush to put gas in the car so you can go to work next day, then you buy groceries) 
3. Gold, silver disappears. Although online was not existent then (no TSF :), we had jewellery shops and they just closed overnight
4. There was a run on banks and people start queueing to get savings. Rioting started, because people realised that their saving even paid will not be enough for anything 
5. some areas experienced energy blackouts. No energy for 1h, then 2 hours ok, then another 1h blackout and so on
6.  Normal economy halts. Long term Planning becomes impossible and people start to think day-by-day at best weekly. Everyone is looking for essentials and no luxuries 
7. After the first winter, the people overthrew the government with massive protests. The only thing that cured the inflation was pegging the currently to something solid (D-mark at that time)…in our lifetime that will be gold
hope that was helpful
 
 
 
 
 

Great advice.
Was always told paying off your mortgage is like removing a millstone around your neck.
If you can do it before hitting 40, it’s way less stress as you age.

Cash out, down size and become mortgage  free if you are not all ready.  It's nice to have investments and look like a finical whizz sometimes the most boring and conservative actions will serve you better in the long term.   Paying off all debt is a life changer and no one owns you.
We are all programmed to think we are better off when we earn more money,  the reality we are far more better off when we are paying less out.  I look at reducing outgoing as increasing my income value.    
Money is not fungible like it's  taught.   A £10 note in ones persons hands is not worth £10 in the next persons when you look at income/outgoings ratio. 
£10 in my hands =  3.33% of my monthly outgoings commitment 
£10 in my friends hands = 0.66% of his monty outgoings 
He needs to earn £50 per hour to everyone of my £10 per hour just to keep the same ratio.  
I know some people with great jobs earning loads but their outings are moronic and what for a 4x4 and a bigger house?    We make ourselves slaves no one else needs to do it for us.  
 
 
 
 
 
 

I park mine in the garage most nights!
😎
On a more serious note:
Its remortgage time
Really? why?
Probably better to de-mortgage.
I had a valuation today and was quite shocked at how much she said it was worth. 
Probably telling you what she knows you want to hear!
The highly experienced estate agent event said 'it probably wont last more than 7 months'
Jerry built, then?
The way I see it is its free money...
There  is no such thing as free lunch, beer, money, postage. 🙂

Any ideas folks? Spreading it about makes sense.
That was my mantra as a teenager.
And I just dont feel comfortable holding it in a bank what with the laws & restrictions going on ATM. 
So keep it in your property. Your home is probably one of your best investments.
... and be glad you live in UK not Ukraine!
 

There is almost too much wrong here to list out!  
The Mis-Placed b******s are the cherry on the icing on the cake!

I have posted numerous photographs and information about fake gold sovereigns, or more grammatically, gold fake sovereigns.
I also thought I had created a "Topic" for them, but can't find it, so here goes:
We recently bought a parcel of gold sovereigns, which included the following forgery:

Reverse of Fake 1918-I Sovereign

Obverse of Fake 1918-I Sovereign

Niton XRF Result for Fake 1918-I Sovereign

Reverse of Fake 1918-I Sovereign with Close Up of Strange Mark
We see fake sovereigns almost on a daily basis, and this is just one such example.
To my mind there is nothing particularly unusual about this particular forgery.
This one appears to have an I mintmark, for the Bombay Mint in India.
The mintmark is rather mushy, so it could just be a "P" for Perth Mint.
It is another obvious forgery, and nothing remarkable about it, with a few possible exceptions*.
I invite any other TSF members to comment on, mainly on the dodgy features they can discern, and will then come back and add some further comments of my own.
* One of the exceptions is  a back-story. The seller also sold us a quantity of sovereigns some weeks ago, which included a 1916-M fake sovereign 
 
The gold content on this 1918-I fake is 916 ppt, which is perfectly in range, as is its silver content.
This would fool someone who was naive enough to think that a £16,000 Niton XRF testing machine can reliably detect fakes, and in this case, it probably did.
The seller told us that both lots of sovereigns he sold us included coins bought from us, and coins bought from a different (named) dealer, the same dealer in both cases.
We have seen fake gold coins from this well known dealer on numerous occasions before, While the evidence from these two examples would fall slighly short of criminal court solidity, I am happy that it provides further circumstantial evidence that the particular dealer is ignorant or negligent about fake coins, and possibly thinks himself an expert, although he must have been confronted by evidence to the contrary many times by now.
Because the above is not totally conclusive, I well refrain from naming the dealer publicly.
 
 

I enjoy the subtleties of interpretation which are possible within the English language, and it seems that numerous other TSF members do also. I prefer to call it double entendre rather than innuendo.
Picking out possible misinterpretations helps to encourage writers to be clearer and less ambiguous.
In speech, while I try to ensure my main point is clear, I often use double entendre to introduce some fun and entertainment into the conversation. It does carry the risk that some people will misunderstand it and react badly. With any luck, that's their problem rather than mine.
😎

Hi all – I've been reading a memoir by one of your countrymen, Charles Black. It's called Counterfeiter: The Story of a British Master Forger (1989).
He was a banknote forger, probably the best around in the 1970s, mostly of USD, but ultimately also some British pounds when he says he reminded himself that he was an Englishman after all. How he faked the watermarks was pure brilliance.
But he dropped something in passing that shocked me. He said his boss had a side hustle of selling fake Sovereigns to the finest bullion dealers in London. But, they weren't fake in terms of metal content. They were true Crown gold alloy coins, 91.67% fine, balance copper, just like real Sovereigns. The boss had them made in Switzerland with the help of some Lebanese forgers (Black says the Lebanese were the best overall forgers in the world). Black said this was profitable because of the markup, i.e. the premium.
That's hard to imagine today, since the premiums before the pandemic were only 5-6%. And that's over spot, which doesn't account for any fabrication costs. Were the premiums on Sovereigns much higher in the 1970s? Were they mostly proofs or something back then? He doesn't mention anything about proofs vs. normal bullion, special editions, etc. @LawrenceChardHave you ever discovered fake Sovereigns that were made of Crown gold? Any other fakes made of the real stuff? This type of forgery is fascinating, almost like an unauthorized minting more than true fakery.

I'm not so sure. People on TSF are a funny bunch.  Members who are so attached to their stack would take with them on holidays. There are so many testimonies of members losing their stacks on tragic boating trips. Do you not believe us !!? 🙄

Breaking News...

BUNGLING BURGLARS 
FOILED AT BULLION
DEALERS
Burglars were baffled when their tunnel came up 50 feet short at Chards in Harrowside Blackpool.
Staff at Chards, the UK’s Leading Coin & Bullion Dealer were amused to find the gaping hole on Wednesday morning in an obvious attempt to tunnel into their underground strongroom.

Turned out to be Electricity North West doing some routine maintenance!
😎
 

oops sorry, I thought I was in the gold section!
gave myself a proper turn😅

40 physical ounces 😊

Interesting topic and sharing my views:)
I was born in a communist country and grew there as a kid until the Berlin Wall events happened. As you can imagine, totalitarian regimes have full control over the money supply and semi control over the money velocity (on what you spend on). Example: my father had to wait 5 years to buy a car, even that he had the money. The result is a rife black market which is very hard to be be controlled by the state. Example of barters I have seen: The car man will get you a car quicker if you help him refurbish his house.
Usually when the state introduces the CBDC or whatever controlled fiat, they will also introduce Universal income (the idea being that you will have free bread, vegetable, consumer goods) for your basic needs, but if you want luxuries you will need to earn those paying with a form of a credit score(like in China today)
That happened was also in the communist states in the past; to get a house you need to be a member of the communist party (otherwise you have to wait 20 years)
Owing PM was punishable, I remember we were were scared to talk about gold, since we might get into trouble   , but both silver and gold were much valued and accepted as barter  
Once CBDC and Universal income comes to the U.K. , all crypto will be decimated over night IMO. You will not be able to mine it anymore without authorities questioning you for the energy consumption or to exchange it (most exchanges will be shut). You might be able to spend it here and there, but majority of people who will barter something for you, will still prefer PM (no traceability of physical PM, nonperishable). Crypto could exist here and there but share of transactions will be much smaller in barter. 
As with any fiat, the CBDC will die eventually and then the cycle will start again with PM coming very much back into the states financial system
lets not forget also that both PM have also actual industrial usage…(even if you are living in a totalitarian state, the state will continue to use silver in electronics, dentistry, etc) 
hope that was useful 
 

In SEA, a lot of folk pay for things with phone 'load' (credit).
I.e. you add $10 top up to your phone account and you are able to send it, even fractionally, to others for payment of goods or services.

In SEA, a lot of folk pay for things with phone 'load' (credit).
I.e. you add $10 top up to your phone account and you are able to send it, even fractionally, to others for payment of goods or services.

Well it's already there, proven and established. I am not sure they can just switch it off. The problem is with centralised exchanges. They can stop that from being connected to cbdc but that's it. The one positive thing about crypto is it allows the world's unbanked to be banked, no need to have a passport and an address to get a wallet like you do to get a bank account and those in the third world have the opportunity to financially move forward. The problem with it in its current form is it's just a gloyfied gambling platform. 

I have mentioned previously that some of our bullion and numismatic coins come with free air miles. We have taken a big step recently to try and improve our "green" credentials", but...
I recently signed a 40 page legal document, received by e-mail attachment, which I read on screen, before replying by e-mail, and also printing out the last page, signing it, and returning it.
Today I was asked to print out the entire document, and post it.
I will refrain from naming the other party, but couldn't resist sharing my response:
Dear ***,
  We can arrange to do that.   There may be a slight delay while we get a few trees chopped down, pulped, turned into paper, then fed into our printer. It is 40 pages long.   We might also need to get a quote from a courier.   You could print out the first 39 pages at your end, and no one would even know the difference. the ***** **** might even get a "Green Award" for conservation.   You don't need it in duplicate or triplicate do you?   I am aware you are probably operating under a "Standard Operating Procedure", and most of this response is intended to be humorous, but there is a serious side to it. We frequently sign multi-page documents, some probably exceeding 40 pages. In many of these cases, we can sign electronically, and in worst case scenarios, we can just post back the relevant signature pages.   Is it worth you checking with (your) legal team whether any of the above suggestions are acceptable? This is not just for us, it's also for the planet.   I have copied a number of your colleagues in to this, and would have included your legal department, but I can't instantly find them in my "Contacts". Yours, etc...
 

@CANV

@CANV

Bitcoin was a gift from the government to the millennials.
Did you miss out?

@CANV

Thanks. 👍
I haven't had it in hand yet, weights and measures to follow, I only have an amateur photo to go on!
Photographing coins is difficult, I think, and takes a certain amount of skill and patience (as I suspect Doug most likely reminds Lawrence on a frequent basis!).
Now, to shake things up, and not to disregard your comment about the height of the crown Steve, what do you think of this?

The effigy sits much lower, and touches the outer rim at the bottom (or bust!).
Now, you may think I'm deliberately trying to confuse you because although the example is indeed an 1887 Jubilee, it's from a different mint.
But aren't they all supposed to be equal?
 

Inspired by the 1957 thread, I thought I'd put this coin up for appraisal/discussion
I haven't actually seen the coin or had it in hand, but I have these pics to look at 😄
I bought it a while ago.
 
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