If I were to store gold for an Internet-less dystopian future, what form should it have? Is this actually done?

Question

Let's say I buy a 1 kg gold bar right now for 1 Bitcoin. I put it in my safe. Then the entire "modern world" collapses the next day, and I have to defend my home and my few valuable pieces of property in this new world... And there's my 1 kg gold bar.

I can't trade the entire thing in for food or help. Then I'd have no gold bar anymore. I'd need it to be, like, a thousand or more very small bars, or minimal coins, or round "nuggets", for my gold to actually be useful.

What's the use of storing a huge single gold bar when you'd just end up not being able to use it except for some major one-time purchase?

I've never seen anyone store or sell little convenient "trading nuggets" or "trading coins" in pure gold for the purpose of allowing what I describe above.

It's not like I can use a cheese slicer on the gold bar each time somebody wants to be paid, or file off some gold dust... That's just silly.

Isn't this a very much overlooked problem for all those who store gold to protect themselves against that kind of future? Do they just assume that there will be time and opportunities for them to safely trade that huge single gold bar for many small pieces of gold? Or do they plan to "cut it into pieces" themselves with some kind of tool?

Answer 1

We could adapt and survive living without the internet but if society completely collapses, all the gold in the world isn't going to help you. Food, guns, ammunition, medicine, clothes, water, etc. will become the new currency.

What you will need is survival skills: How to grow/hunt food. How to survive outdoors (you won't be able to defend your home because some others will have larger numbers and better weapons). Urban areas will become death traps (disease, decomposing bodies, dog eat dog survival, etc.). Most of us will not make it.

Answer 2

You are right, gold bars are not very spendable. That's why coins were invented.

Coins are small, standardized bits of metal that are minted by a trustworthy entity to contain precise amounts of a valuable metal. You can get gold coins issued by the American government in sizes as small as 1/10 oz., which is worth a couple hundred dollars today. Other mints around the world make even smaller gold coins.

Even Uncle Scrooge knows the value of storing some of your gold in coin form.

Answer 3

To actually answer your question...

1. the normal tradable/usable gold bullion bars are "400 ounce" bars. Aka LBMA, mocattas, LGD bar, etc. (Note that as a curiosity, they are not 400 ounces, they each vary. If you're ever talking to some fool who thinks they are a gold bug and has never actually owned any bars, you can trick them with that question :) )

(If you wish to know why they are called LGD etc, read a boring wiki article.)

2. the normal tradable/usable small bullion bars are one kilo bars, as mentioned in the question

Just as you suspect, there is a smaller size:

3. the only tradable/usable smaller bullion is indeed one ounce rounds. You can buy and sell these instantly for very near spot anywhere in the world - at the blink of an eye.

The generally famous bullion rounds are these three: the canadian maples, the lovely aussie kangaroos (they also had a fantastic chinese year series), and the britannia.

Note that there are other 1 ounce gold coins which have one ounce of gold BUT they are made of an alloy (ie, the overall weight is a bit more than an ounce). These are cool and fairly easily sellable, but stick only to pure-bullion rounds (the three mentioned) for the most easily sellable situation. Got it? Good!

That's it. There are also novelty smaller sizes, but forget it.

Footnote: a 10oz size bar is somewhat popular in iconoclastic Switzerland. And indeed in enigmatic China there are certain oddball sizes that are slightly popular. But the above three are the way.

When the zombie apocalypse comes...

Let's add a little intelligence and finesse here. Sure, if there's literally like an asteroid strike it is meaningless.

What the OP means by "when the world ends" is a crisis typified by a hyperinflation - for example the German hyperinflation in the after-war years.

These happen all the time - every century or so somewhere or other.

In those times you'll be extremely glad you have lots of gold, whether ounces, kilobars or (if you're rich!) normal bars.

A trading note ...

Be aware that a couple years ago everyone with a clue was saying, buy gold, be a goldbug, it's gonna skyrocket

Take care not to jump on a fad which has already had a big run or run it's course.

And don't forget chain ...

There's already an answer here which (shock) has some facts on chain. Gold chain is a really great thing if you're a "dollar collapse is coming" type. If it's 100% you can buy and sell it very close to spot. You can also sometimes/often, uh, well, smuggle not inconsiderable value through national borders / war zones / etc. via chain.

Just wander in to Chow Tai Fook in Hong Kong, the spreads are incredible/nonexistent for bullion (ie pure) chain and knickknacks.

Answer 4

I have a friend whose grandparents escaped Communism becoming émigrées from Hungary in the 1950s, who told me that gold chains were the preferred form of value at the time.

They are easily stored relatively safely (e.g. around the neck) and links can be removed and added without too much difficulty.

Answer 5

Gold will be completely worthless in a dystopian future with no internet.

It certainly won’t be worth the inflated price of $2000/ounce.

If you want to survive, you should spend $50,000 on a generator, a 10,000 gallon propane tank, and a100,000 gallon water storage tank.

Answer 6

What's the use of storing a huge single gold bar when you'd just end up not being able to use it except for some major one-time purchase?

The traditional response to social upheaval is to get yourself and your gold smuggled to somewhere with less social upheaval. Once you reach a safe, reasonably stable country you simply trade your gold for the local currency as normal.

If you want something smaller to trade along the way, necklaces and rings will draw a lot less attention; any smuggler or corrupt official handed a tenth of a gold bar is liable to wonder if you'd hand over the rest with a bit of encouragement.

Answer 7

There are gold/silver coins in various weights. There are also breakable gold bars that you just bend back and forth to snap off into smaller increments. You can find such things by searching for "fractional gold coin","barter metals", or "CombiBar." I'm not recommending this site, it just happens to have a page with most of the options I'm familiar with: SchiffGold - Barter Metals

If all you had were larger bars then you're correct it would be problematic. You'd have to trade it for something big, find a source of high heat, or find someone that could change it to smaller increments for you. I would imagine having a variety of coins in different metals and quantities would be helpful, but the challenge of preparing for some worst-case scenario is knowing what that actually entails. It could be far more valuable to have means for purifying water or gathering/cooking food than to have some hunks of metal (some creative people have spent a lot of time thinking about such things if you want to explore the world of doomsday preppers).

Answer 8

A 1 kg gold bar makes an interesting paperweight, and will only cost about $55K at the current price :-)

But I expect people keeping gold around in case of that dystopian future probably buy coins, which are readily availably in 0.1 to 1 ounce sizes. A quick search shows a dozen dealers within an hour's drive of me, and I don't live in a major metro area.

Answer 9

I would make a distinction between economic downfall that is localized to specific economy or even whole world vs. an existential threat that can end life in a matter of months, like a virus. If you look back at the panic of 2020 March, you’ll see that everything tanked. There was no safe heaven to preserve value. Gold and BTC both went down hard. If this was some sort of economic crisis, especially if only affected certain regions, then I would predict that at least gold would go up and probably some crypto as well. Imho, in your case, gold has almost no value at all.

Answer 10

In addition to the answers above I will point out the existence of the British Sovereign, which has been around for centuries and you can buy right now in various sizes and metals.