Silver – the perhaps best reason to buy it
Many precious metals investors neglect silver, perhaps because of its relative abundance and therefore much lower price. There are however several good reasons not to overlook that cheaper shiny metal that has attracted buyers for millennia already. The famous investor Warren Buffett once purchased 129.7 million ounces of it for his holding company Berkshire Hathaway. Even in small amounts of just a few dozens of ounces, it could be very useful to buy silver in the form of silver bullion coins or silver bars.
small silver coins are better than large bars for bartering
At a time when most countries get ever deeper into debt and when some countries can’t resist the urge to try to print their way out of trouble (while giving it the fanciful name of quantitative easing), it can’t hurt to hold something with real value in your hands. Silver can’t be printed and since there are no great variations in annual mining output won’t lose its value in an inflationary way. Of course, the same is true for gold but silver’s much lower price makes it accessible to investors and preppers who are priced out of the gold market.
Silver’s main appeal to preppers?
The white metal’s much lower value compared to gold is actually an advantage for a prepper, who wants to have something tangible to barter with (for groceries, water, fuel) for the time when the current unsustainable debt-based financial system melts down. Once our current paper money is possibly as worthless as it was during the Weimar Republic (when many people used paper money as fuel to heat their homes), paying with small silver coins at your local supermarket will be better than paying with a much more valuable gold coin.
If you pay with a gold coin then, you will likely have difficulty to use up its value for your groceries or other necessities. After all, a 1 oz gold coin is currently worth about USD 1,200 and I don’know anyone spending that amount for one single purchase of necessities. And if you allow the cashier to give you back cash for the unused part of the gold coin’s value, you will effectively lose value as the change you receive in cash will be worth less the next day. So it’s much better to pay for your necessities with a 1 oz silver coin which is currently worth about USD 20. That amount should be enough for a single person’s survival needs for 2 or 3 days and you won’t have difficulty using up this small amount.
