Quote of the day—Richard

I told my broker about 5 years ago, “I wish I had had $150,000.00 worth of rifles instead of all that stock.”

Richard
September 16, 2012
Comment to We Are Of Different Worlds.
[I don’t own nearly as many guns as many people I know. But I can’t think of any gun, except those with exceptionally heavy use, that might have gone down in value. Nearly all have gone up in value. I have a lot of ammunition components (and a far amount of factory ammo). All of it has gone way up in value. Investing in lead and copper has paid off. Not as much as gold and silver has but you can’t eat gold or silver. And you can’t defend yourself, your family, or your possessions with a piece of gold or silver.—Joe]

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7 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Richard

  1. Well, the value of the guns hasn’t really gone up, it’s just that the dollar is worth less so it takes more to equal the same value.

    I recall someone a while ago compared the prices of guns in gold between now and some decades ago, and the prices were pretty stable. I wish I could find that, but my quick attempts at google-fu have been fruitless.

  2. Every time I go to sell a rifle or pistol to raise some cash, I’m told it’s not worth what I last paid for it, and in one instance after about four months on consignment and no sale I pulled one back. Apparently I was the last person who even wanted that gun.

  3. “…you can’t defend yourself, your family, or your possessions with a piece of gold or silver.”
    Although either one, particularly gold, would make excellent (if expensive) bullets. If it weren’t so expensive it would be fun to experiment with something like a 5.56 to 7mm high BC gold rifle bullet.

    Anyway; there’s more talk about hyper inflation, and with QE3 it’s pretty well guaranteed. So hard assets will be better than the soon-to-be-radically-deflated dollars. We are in for it now.

  4. The Mexican drug cartels have figured out how to turn gold into guns. Check out some of the golden guns that have been confiscated from them.

  5. Jake,

    I remember reading something similar a year or two ago. The claim was basically that over the course of the last century or two, a good quality handgun was roughly the same price as an ounce of gold. Obviously there are fluctuations on both sides of that equation, but apparently the relationship has held true for a long time.

    right now it looks like you could get three handguns for an ounce of gold, which means that either handguns are underpriced or gold is overpriced. Either way, I recommend building up a diversified portfolio of handguns, rifles and ammunition.

  6. JMD —

    Handguns are cheaper to produce now, less expert hand fitting & more use of polymers, castings, etc.

    A handgun built using the same techniques as yesteryear still runs about an ounce of gold.

  7. Geo; excellent point. Generally, things are now cheaper relative to incomes. Progress in manufacturing and materials science makes it faster, easier and cheaper to make things, so we have to be careful in making comparisons. A hand-made suit, a hand-fitted gun, a custom built car– all are about he same price as before, being that human labor can still be compared to human labor of the past. Still you’ll get a better product today because of materials and other technonogies that go into things, so there’s still a difference. Also; since with modern methods a person can produce more in the same amount of time, labor is more productive. And none of that takes into account cultural influences (what’s “hot” or in style form one time to another, and the generally fickle nature of markets. Prices are a funny thing.

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