Hard to spend.

Good chance of it being manipulated by banks, rich people or govts.

Does not earn any ongoing revenue. Only gains value if someone else will pay more for it.

Probably good to store wealth IF you can keep it safe. Where will you keep it to assure safety? Bank safe deposit box? Will the govt just confiscate the contents of all safe deposit boxes? They already gave themselves permission to do that. Other than waiting until trouble is over, how do you/we spend it or keep it safe?

Are least old junk silver coins (dimes and quarters) might be better for buying things in bad times than gold coins.

Could be worth putting maybe 5 percent of money you're not using into it.

I started of my career in the Jewelry Trade back when I was 14. That's how I grew my savings to buy my first rental home at 18. At that time, back in 1974, gold was around $300 an oz. When gold hit $500, jewelers wanted to dispose of their unpopular jewelry works and get the high $500-$600 oz gold price. But removing stones, having their gold refined back to 24 pure gold was costly. So I put the word out, I will by unwanted jewelry and pay top dollar for their gold content, no need to remove the stones. And if there was a larger center stone, I'd pay something towards those stones, like 60 cents on the dollar.

So many jewelers sold $10,000 worth of jewelry gold and the buys would discount the sub carat gold and charge for the stone removal, not paying for any stones. So out of $10K in gold, the selling jewelers would get back around $9K, being taken advantage of.

On the same lots, I'd pay the gold value, less 5%, so the sellers would receive around $9,500, plus a few hundred for the stones.

So decades later at a High School reunion the subject came up how I cheated others by making them by worthless Jewelry.

So I was asked to explain why I pulled a fast one on friends. One person, a lazy guy, just put the $10K worth of jewelry in his safety deposit box. So I challenged him, with several witnesses, take that jewelry and get it appraised.

The next day the class president and my friend gook the $10 K purchase to an appraisal. They were offered $46,000 for the Gold Value, up from the $10K he paid. But as finished jewelry, it was worth around $100,000.

When you print large quantities of cash it typically inflates everything by the same amount so part of that is inflation. There is a trend up though. Gold prices have always been a measure of the public's perception of world stability. Right now there are a lot of world conflicts going on, Russia, Hezbollah, Iran, Gaza, and Yemen to mention a few. Add to that the declining relationships with China, some significant instability primarily in Turkey, Argentina, Venezuela from rampant inflation and corruption. Current gold prices are reflecting how uncertain buyers are feeling about the dollar and other world currencies. If you look at gold prices over time you can pick out the rough patches in our society.

The only Gold I own is a 2 - Ton Rock at the end of

Just for some fun stats...

If you invested $1 in gold around 2009-2010, it would be worth around $2.40 today.

If you invested $1 in Bitcoin around 2009-2010, it would be worth around $91,000,000 today.

:)

The same thing you do with stocks.

Yeah, gold is at a high right now. So don't buy it.

Buy LOW.

SELL high.

*grins

Btw, the all time inflation adjusted high price of gold was set at $3,300 in February 1980. If you bought then, you STILL haven't gotten your money back... in 44 years.

By contrast, if you'd bought $1,000 worth of S&P 500 Index Mutual Funds and ignored them until today, you'd have $1.2 million.

What are my thoughts on gold? It objectively sucks as an investment.