I know this is just going on and on, but it keeps evolving. I got into a discussion over “investing” in coins vs. just investing elsewhere and, as expected, they really weren’t impressed with my take.

That’s fine. All the down votes in the world don’t bother me. Imaginary buttons online mean nothing. So here’s what I had to say and why I said it.

First off, although I said that I don’t invest in coins, I do invest. I have stocks and bonds and all of that. Ever since about 2020, I shifted a lot of my holdings away from standard retail stocks to production stocks. I had a lot of money in lumber futures as the giant Covid jump happened and that was very lucrative. Now that the economy is tanking, as I knew that it would, I wanted to move away from companies that sell stuff to companies that produce stuff that people make other things from. Mining, commodities, that kind of thing. It’s done very well.

So I’m not saying don’t invest. I’m saying to divest your views on investing from your collections. Collections aren’t about making money. They are about having fun with your spare time and your spare capital. Don’t spend anything on a hobby that you’re not willing to lose because it’s essentially a sunk cost. That’s my take.

The problem is, for a lot of these people, they’re not collecting coins, they’re collecting commodities. They just want them for the silver content, in a convenient package. They don’t  care about the history of the coin, it’s just there to melt down in case the end of the world comes, so they can be Lord Humongous of the Wastes, with their horde jingling in a bag around their waist.

Sorry, those people are the first to go. Nobody is going to be impressed with your “collection.” In a societal collapse, you’re going to have a lot more to worry about than your “precious metals” supply. You won’t be Lord Humongous, you’re going to be Toadie. It’s sad how many people can’t figure that out.

To go beyond this though, I think that a lot of people with this mindset are going to be in for a rough time going forward. Today, it’s not that hard to artificially make diamonds and it’s getting cheaper and easier every single year. Natural diamonds as an investment is eventually going to die. Of course, they’re making laws to protect their “investment”, but that’s only going to go on so long. The Hope Diamond is worth a bunch of money, but what happens when we can crank out things 10x that size for a couple of bucks?

For that matter, what about art? It’s not going to be too much longer before we can mass-produce all of the existing masterpieces, perfect down to the brush strokes, for a song. “I’ve got the original!” How do you know, when all of these are absolutely identical down to their atomic structure? The value in “rare” stuff is going to go away. I’m going to be laughing when it does.

Even getting back to precious metals, it won’t be too long until we’ve got space-flight capabilities that will allow us to mine the moon and asteroid field. After that, we’ll have more gold, silver and platinum than we can conceivably use. All of the people hoarding coins for their metallic content are going to be goned, while I’m going to be doing just fine since we’ll always need someone to go out and dig this stuff up. What are these people going to do then? Reality doesn’t just sit still.

That brings us right back to collecting things. In philately, when we can make as many inverted Jenny stamps as we want, absolutely identical to the originals, what’s going to happen? Sure, you can declare that the original 100 are meaningful from a historical perspective, but when absolutely anyone can have a perfect replica in their collection, how many are going to be willing to shell out millions for one of the originals? The same goes for any coin. All of that supposed value is going to instantly evaporate. What they’re made of won’t matter anymore.

You know what will remain? The enjoyment that we get out of the act of collecting. We will still do it because we will still enjoy it. The very idea of mineral wealth is going to go away because we’ll have all of it that we can handle. The technology doesn’t have to improve that much before this becomes a reality. I’d bet that within the next century, we’ll be out there dragging gold and silver back home in quantities we can’t currently imagine.

Maybe it’s time to be an early adopter and stop collecting out of greed and start doing it just because it’s fun to do. I know that’s how I look at it. What’s your take?