On the Nature of Things | Forum

Juno wrote:Ratio is almost 100 right now. that's rare. If I had gold I'd be very tempted to swap it for silver at this point, and wait for the ratio to drop back to around 40 before swapping back.

Nonc Hilaire wrote:Arbitrage between London and Shanghai silver is consistently running +$2.00.

At over 10% premium for physical it's time to start watching the market again.

Colonel Sun wrote:

Nonc Hilaire wrote:Arbitrage between London and Shanghai silver is consistently running +$2.00.

At over 10% premium for physical it's time to start watching the market again.

Gold appears to be taking off like a scalded dog.

Now near its last, inflation adjusted, peak in 2011.

Good call.

noddy wrote: ↑Sun Aug 11, 2019 2:04 am England, Europe, America and China all having currency risks, nearly every other country exposed heavily on trade to them.

Colonel Sun wrote: ↑Thu Oct 15, 2020 6:33 am Visual Capital | Table of 10 year commodity returns

noddy wrote: ↑Mon May 03, 2021 4:15 am the perth mint claims the only problem is production of fancy little silver tokens - they cant keep up, so they cancel orders rather than get caught with a backlog against a volatile purchase price.

as always, I dont think precious metals are a way of making money, they are just a hedge against losing too much of it in an unstable market.

im not convinced doomsday is around the corner, but for those about to retire, it is a good idea to have some failsafes against your nest egg being destroyed by a global woopsie that takes 10 years to recover.

Colonial Pipeline Co. paid nearly $5 million to Eastern European hackers on Friday, contradicting reports earlier this week that the company had no intention of paying an extortion fee to help restore the country’s largest fuel pipeline, according to two people familiar with the transaction.

The company paid the hefty ransom in difficult-to-trace cryptocurrency within hours after the attack, underscoring the immense pressure faced by the Georgia-based operator to get gasoline and jet fuel flowing again to major cities along the Eastern Seaboard, those people said. A third person familiar with the situation said U.S. government officials are aware that Colonial made the payment

Miss_Faucie_Fishtits wrote: ↑Fri May 14, 2021 4:34 am They went and paid the ransom. The thing that shouldn't be done was done. Be afraid, be very afraid........

Colonial Pipeline Paid Hackers Nearly $5 Million in Ransom

Colonial Pipeline Co. paid nearly $5 million to Eastern European hackers on Friday, contradicting reports earlier this week that the company had no intention of paying an extortion fee to help restore the country’s largest fuel pipeline, according to two people familiar with the transaction.

The company paid the hefty ransom in difficult-to-trace cryptocurrency within hours after the attack, underscoring the immense pressure faced by the Georgia-based operator to get gasoline and jet fuel flowing again to major cities along the Eastern Seaboard, those people said. A third person familiar with the situation said U.S. government officials are aware that Colonial made the payment

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... -in-ransom

Lego proliferates in many family homes. It clogs vacuum cleaners. It accumulates in drifts in dusty corners. It causes excruciating pain to unwary adults who step on it barefoot.

Take heart, weary parent, as you shell out £130 for a Hogwarts Chamber of Secrets set for your kid. Those little plastic bricks could also be a valuable asset.

Lego toys are a better investment than gold, according to researchers from Moscow’s Higher School of Economics. The yellow metal and the stock market suffer from price volatility. “Retired” Lego sets may be more stable and can appreciate faster. Their value rose by an annual average of 11 per cent over 28 years, apparently.

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There is a massive caveat. You cannot sell a bucket of loose bricks for a fat cheque. Equally, while that Temple of Doom set may be complete, those chew marks on Indiana Jones’s hat imply depreciation. The study analysed the prices of 2,322 unopened Lego sets.

The most expensive sets on the second-hand market are mint, boxed editions of the original Millennium Falcon from Star Wars for about $1,500, or a vintage Taj Mahal for up to $2,000. The latter, ounce-for-ounce, is indeed worth more than gold.

Adult collectors buy these sets. For a festive season purchase to have a chance of appreciating in value, you would have to persuade the recipient to “lay it down” unopened, rather like a bottle of fine wine.

The same frenzy that has pushed up real estate and stock prices has also spilled over to collectibles such as sneakers, trading cards, vintage video games and handbags. It is also driving demand for digital artwork in the form of non-fungible tokens.

But unlike NFTs, no one is paying millions for a Lego set. In contrast, a vintage Super Mario Bros video game sold for $2m and the Nyan Cat NFT fetched nearly $600,000.

Lego collectors are also exposed to price drops when the company reissues popular sets.

The real wonder of Lego is not that fancy playsets have resale values running into thousands of dollars. It is that parents happily shell out $100 for plastic construction toys available — albeit in basic forms — as cheap Chinese knock-offs.

The investment value of Lego reflects the greater triumph of a family-owned manufacturer from Denmark. Through shrewd licensing, smart marketing and strict quality control, Lego Group sets benchmark prices for small, foot-unfriendly bricks all over the world.