I know people out there who have invested a lot in gold under the belief that in the event of like complete societal collapse or hyperinflation, they could use it for purchasing.
I have the hunch it’s a scam, but I haven’t learned enough monetary theory, business, or economics to understand why.
This is just me, and I’m no expert. But I kind of think that, if you’re legitimately worried about your country’s currency collapsing, you might want to consider leaving your country. Any sort of collapse that leads to hyperinflation or the large-scale elimination of financial infrastructure is probably going to be difficult if not impossible for the average person to survive, gold or no.
That said, precious metals are a niche enough market that I can’t imagine it not being rife with predatory sellers; companies that aren’t offering scams per se—you’ll probably pay them and receive what you pay for—but companies which are counting on people not knowing anything about the market and accepting a terrible price or poor quality goods.
Again, not an expert. But my end-of-the-world investment would be in shelf-stable food, easily-stored seeds (for planting), medicine, hand tools, high-quality camping gear, books, that sort of thing. If there is a collapse, those sorts of things will be immediately useful and also tradeable.
Anyone who buys gold online should have a tester, and there are reputable bullion companies like JM who don’t charge a lot of markup. If you’re on ebay trying to buy gold bullion there’s a chance it’s probably fake / silver wrapped with gold and stamped. There’s videos on the internet of folks cutting those bars in half and seeing what’s inside.
A way to increase your chances of buying real product is to buy coins that are in bad enough shape where there’s no numismatic value left. Whereas every country that mints coins has strict laws against counterfeiting them and you can go to prison for doing it, making “novelty” gold bars and rounds is perfectly legal and there’s almost no risk if you get caught scamming people with them (most often just a platform ban).
At the moment unless you have some really rare stuff the numismatic value is generally less than the gold itself, I know for sure at least with standard “Napoleon” coins that is the case.
Every country is worried about their currency collapsing because all economies are deeply connected. It just takes one major trading partner to collapse for a domino effect to ripple through the world.
Definitely a fair point. But for the most part, being in the country that collapses is going to be worse than being in a different country.