Current Gold Price

[UndercoverElephant]

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/london- ... -lbma-says

LONDON, March 4 (Reuters) - London's gold price benchmark hit an all-time high of $2,083.15 per troy ounce at a morning auction on Monday, surpassing the previous record of $2,078.40 set on Dec. 28, the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) said.

[kenneal - lagger]

According to BullionByPost gold hit a historic high of over £2000 per ounce - £2007.82 and currently at £1993.79 - and fresh rises look likely.

If I thought the price might come down I would sell my holding and buy again later at a lower price. But the reason for holding a small amount of gold is as a hedge against complete collapse of the economic system and a significant drop in price to make the sale worthwhile cannot be relied upon.

[clv101]

It's a fine line, in a "complete collapse of the economic system", good luck selling your gold and realising its 'book' value.

[adam2]

In a complete collapse, gold should retain some value, as it has in previous collapses, but I agree that the chance of realising the present value is very small.
Paying an ounce of gold for a few cases of tinned food may seem excessive, but is preferable to starving.

[UndercoverElephant]

It's a fine line, in a "complete collapse of the economic system", good luck selling your gold and realising its 'book' value.

If the economic system collapses then gold no longer has a "book value". It has whatever value it has in the situation it exists in. It will certainly have value -- quite a lot of value I suspect. More than its current book value, at least in the right situation. What you would not be able to do if the economic system has collapsed is turn it into money which can then be used to buy all sorts of other things of much less value. But that wouldn't be gold's "fault" -- you're talking about a situation where there isn't any "official money", so nothing can have a "book value".

To be honest I find this a difficult thought experiment, because I can't imagine this scenario playing out. I can imagine the electronic banking system completely disappearing. I can imagine hyperinflation. Both get rid of most of our economic-monetary system as it currently exists, but people would find other things to use as money until such time as a new official monetary system (presumably one that looks more like historic systems than the current one) was created. I guess my imagination problems are because I can't see the sovereign state disappearing any time soon, and if there is a state then there will be some sort of money.

[kenneal - lagger]

I'm not expecting a book value for the small amount of gold that I hold but it is just one part of my hedging against collapse. As a conventional saving it is certainly working well even if I did buy near the peak of the market at the time. I want to buy some more as a gift to a grandchild but I'll wait a while in hope that there is a dip.