RDCanecutter

The Great Alabama Coin Recon For no other point that your metal-head entertainment, today I took a couple hundred bucks out of the ATM and decided to visit all 5 coin stores I knew of in the Birmingham Alabama area. If this amuses you, maybe do the same thing where you live. My goal was to find one ounce of silver in each place at the best price possible, but NOT while imitating my old Pakistani housemate's bargaining skills, just ask the price, pay it, move on, Maybe see if each place had something unique. Our steed on this journey will be my 95 Geo Tracker that has taken me to Maine and Mexico. It lives in the garage now because young mechanics don't know how to work on it, and old ones are too drunk. It pours oil out the front end so I brought a jug and a funnel with me. Probably a fish kill will be on my record when I die and go to hell. The stores on the industrial west side where people work for a living were the first to open, so from Downtown Bham we roll west.

Walked right into that crafty pheasant trap, you did, then all that night had to listen to their piping pheasant voices: "Hey Joe! Tonight you Freeze!"

Mrs. Canecutter used to say that, adding that it was an ancient Swedish saying. I riposted with the ancient Alabama saying of "Who gives a fuck what Swedes think? They're Goddam Morons, They Live In Sweden, Where It's Cold." She told me to calm down. I WAS CALM.

That's my anti-MAGA superpower. I am always whiter than the guys who want White Supremacy. And yet, I still know how to shoot the cag. They'll never learn that at Stormfront.

For Monday I've got a wild hair to ignore all adult responsibilities, pull some money from an ATM, and ride around to 4 or 5 coin shops tomorrow buying the same thing from each one. Something like a generic silver round, or maybe some 90%.

I always used to pair up the students and make them edit each others' work first.

I was working off-the-books for a South American family who'd bought out a Sicilian place. Got no pay but decent tips, free beer and food, still lost weight. When we had drama, it was after-hours like when somebody shot a rifle from inside the bar to see if the bullet would go through the wall. It did, and through the wall of the neighboring camera place, but at a high angle and they were closed. Handshake deals all around. I saw one brawl there, dude with a busted head, blood on the floor. Cops showed up and told everybody to go home in different directions. The owner would have ejected ostentatious prayers before they got to the second use of "just."

Bad customers were beneath retaliation. Bad customers were blocking good customers from sitting at my tables, so if somebody wanted to act snotty, I wasn't going to fuck with their food, I was going to wham-bam-thank-you-maam them out the door clutching a go-plate. Zen out, send in the tippers.

My Aramaic is a little rusty-- is "he" even a pronoun in it?

Go grow your forests back in England and Scotland, broseeph.

I'm down if you gimme a reminder. Brain damage do take a toll don't she.

The tartan tells me he's Clan MacEmbolism.

Nihilist. That's bad. Say what you will about the tenets of MAGA, at least it's a grift.

I am not generally pro-Highland-Clearances, but sometimes, I understand.

You're never homeless when you have a rickshaw.

Ayup. I seent it. The rest of Jasper is fortunately doing better than its early-80s-vibe mall. We found it by accident. We were on a drive NW on a misty day with "Autobahn" pumping out the speakers. Around Jasper we got hungry, just slid on into town using the old visual restaurant finders. At that point the mall was still running at about 90 per cent. Had never heard of Garfields, turns out it's an Applebee's clone aimed at small markets. At the time they still had a dozen or so locations nation-wide, and Corporate had gamely listed them all on a frosted glass sign, including Zanesville Ohio. "Zanesville!" blurted Mrs. Canecutter, "I saw a dead rat outside a hotel room in Zanesville!" I'm in Jasper for artsy shit once a year or so. I like dropping in for lunch at Garfields. It's like getting to be an extra in a 90s after-school movie. The mall is shriveling away but Garfields, peeking out of the front, still draws a crowd. Almost every kid I meet who moved to Birmingham from Jasper used to work in Garfields. @MaybeaCoordinator walked past it during his Scotch-Irish Reconnection tour, but we had eaten already at the far-superior The Frosty Mug.

Nope. Actually pretty well-educated in real life, to add to the annoying factor. Used to be an artsy theater chick from Montevallo. Got a little culted out. Ahh, you know Jimmy? Everybody knows Jimmy. Jasper is almost Cockney at times. We stopped in the Jasper Mall to eat at Garfields. Girl asked us if we wanted a bay-ooth.

I have an anti-vaxer cousin who has started talking in the Kari Lake voice. This is a step up from her older conversations about witches and curses in what she imagined to be King James scriptural patois. The problem is that my Mom can't understand a damn thing she says, we were visiting my Mom at the same time, and instead of enunciating, Cuz just kept that blurry purr going. She and her husband used to have an airport shuttle company that was devastated by Uber, and the man now runs a route for Coca-Cola. Cool. But Cuz couldn't use the actual words, she had to dress it up as "he has various accounts... Hmmm mmmm." About 4 times my Mom tries to understand what the hell this woman is saying. Finally I busted in: "He's Drivin a Truck for Co-Cola, Mama." "Why didn't somebody say so?" Cousin: "hmmm mm hmmm hmmm."

As much as the metals, I love the Goblin stories behind the metals. Today I bring you The Tragic Tale of Ohio Precious Metals Located in the small town of Jackson OH, this refinery was once one of the 4 biggest producers of gold "good delivery" bars, and employed 250 people in the area. I remember them referred to as "Blue Collar" silver rounds, and I like the design on the one I still have. But then there was a merger with NTR in Texas, and some sort of new HQ under "Elemetals." In itself not a problem. What became a problem were three douchbags in Miami buying cartel gold for the organization. There was trouble, and Ohio Precious Metals took the biggest hit. You can't deliver Good Delivery bars containing known blood money gold. The other parts of the operation may still be stumbling along. As far as I know, OPM in Jackson Ohio no longer employs anyone.

I would pay money to watch a Frenchman slap the shit out of Zeihan. Hell it doesn't even have to be a real Frenchman. Lie to me, I won't care.

That BMP is now a particularly fragile pillbox.

Just bear in mind how high gold is right now.

I am a simple caveman when it comes to stocks, especially on things like gold stocks, so I'll leave that side be. On buying actual coin-sized chunks of gold at low premiums, I'll share what I know. Bad deals are entirely possible, like your example of 30% mark-up. Fakes are possible (bars are easier to fake than coins.) It pays to have two or three things you are interested in, that you learn all you can about. So you can spot a prize if it is on special. The saying is "Buy the book before you buy the coin," which can involve a lot of internet perusing as well. Get to know brick-and-mortar coin shops. You might catch one on cash-flow-crunch day when they've bought a ton of stuff under spot. Or use the old "what's the price if I get 5 at once? angle. If your friends realize you are interested in an occasional gold coin, you might get offers to buy things they hid away. I usually offer spot, or in between what they'd get and what I'd pay. We both do a little better. I have even (rarely) bought gold at under spot from a friend because he wanted it gone and we had already done a couple of deals. There used to be tricks like using eBay bucks where you could get even small fractional coins at spot. Those appear to be extinct, but some of the guys scoring gold on Costco appear to get the price down via credit card kickbacks and what-not. I am a recovering heroin I mean CC addict so I let that pass.

You may be right about everything else in the post, but this one jumped out at me. If you are willing to poke around, and you want gold, you can get it with a 0% to to 3% mark-up. I don't doubt that the elder-abuse crowd are flogging it at 20 (to 50?)% percent mark-up. Pretty much if it's on a national radio show or TV, run.