Chcete si pomôcť? Urobte to! Časť druhá

Do you want help? Do it! Part Two

A series of blogs about our own, authentic experience of dealing with rising inflation and depreciating money. Once a month I'll write about my good and bad experiences, successes and mistakes.

Part Two - How my investing is going

It's been a month since I started going my own way in fighting inflation.

A month ago I took the advice of the Czech Mint to buy my first gold coin, specifically, to be exact, a 1/25 oz gold numbered Tolar coin. I paid €133 for it at the time.

It seems I did the right thing by taking the advice of the Czech Mint's advisors. The little coin sold out really fast, not a single piece of the limited edition of 500 was left available. I only just made it. That's the first good news for me - I wasn't the only one who liked the small gold Tolar (Toliar in our language). There are no more than 500 of us in the whole world who own one. More realistically, however, there are fewer of us. Collectors and investors, more experienced than me, can sense an opportunity and have probably bought more of these coins in anticipation of their price rising rapidly upwards. How many there are, of course, I have no way of knowing, although I have tried - selling coins, not just gold and silver ones, is a highly discreet affair. And that's a good thing. No one needs to make it known how many gold coins they have at home, inviting greedy thieves to their homes or getting into the chatter of neighbours, friends or acquaintances. I am an exception. But that's only because I've decided that I'll invest no more than something around one hundred in gold and silver coins, sometimes a little more, sometimes less. I'm in no danger of being slandered, and I hope not of being burglarized either.

My first gold coin investment

 So back to my first investment in a gold coin. The numbered Jáchymov Tolar from the Czech mint cost me exactly 133€. After a month I'm going to see how it did on the market, if it appreciated or vice versa. A month is a relatively short time when investing, it's just that we live in turbulent times - inflation has supposedly eased, but we haven't particularly felt it. The war in Ukraine continues and then...Boom!!! First one reputable US bank fell, followed by another and another, threatening a domino effect of banks starting to fail like in 2008. And when the world-famous Swiss bank Credit Suisse began to reel in its death throes, things got really serious. All of this was immediately reflected in the market. Gold prices began to rise, sometimes insanely. Fortunately, or so it now seems, there was a calming down, and the quick intervention of both the US and Swiss governments when Credit Suisse was taken over by rival bank UBS dampened the market for a while, but it was far from calming it down. We shall see what follows. All of this can happen in a single month, and it all has implications for our money and our investments.

So, I'm still tapping out, I bought at €133. In just one month, has my first gold coin appreciated, or conversely - fallen? Auction portals and other places on the web where investment coins are traded briskly have a fairly good telling value. For example, auction.cz has a good reputation.

And there is offered and sold numbered Tolar, which I bought in the range from 4.100 CZK to 4.499 CZK. This at a rough conversion of about 25 CZK for 1 Euro is 164€ to 179,96€, so almost 180€. And we're talking about open auctions, in which the bidding is still going on, so it's likely that the price will close at a higher value when sold. That's the way it is in auctions. It looks like an extremely decent, even obscene, appreciation in one month. If we just take the lower end, the price increase from €133 to €164 is an appreciation of 23.3%! In one single month! At the upper limit it is even 35%! This is already bordering on speculative investing returns. And investing in gold or gold coins is not. Because with speculation, you can lose everything in one fell swoop.

With gold, it's different. Even if prices fall (it happens), you still hold at least the value of the gold in the coin, not zero or a loss. Gold is for protection rather than speculative getting rich. But if it can offset the losses from inflation and even outperform it when our gold and silver coins rise in value instead of falling in paper money, why not? It will please...

So the first decision in my private battle with inflation was the right one. It gives one optimism and also appetite. But I am not inclined to rush into buying like a gambler, and I am well aware that if I crossed my inner limit of investing last month and invested €133 instead of €100, I will take a little bit off this month.
Why silver investment coins are worth reaching for

 So how to cut back on investments? You can't really do well with gold, but fortunately, there's silver. Cheaper, but it appreciates just as well in bad times. So instead of my original intention, to buy a 1/25 oz gold Czech Lion investment coin for around €120, I'm taking my own advice again and buying a silver investment ounce Czech Lev 2022 - Anniversary coin.

The silver is ruthenium plated and the lion silhouette is gold plated. It is double plated. And it shows it off, the contrast has increased.  What are we going to say - this coin is simply beautiful, I would say almost breathtaking. I'm a layman, I'm just learning, but this time I succumbed more to emotion than reason, the beauty just wowed me. In case you, like me, didn't know exactly what ruthenium is, I learned at the Czech Mint that it is the rarest of the triad of platinum metals. Sounds good, doesn't it? The rarest...

And something else is interesting. It's a 2022 issue, but it didn't come out until 2023. I don't know exactly why, I'm just guessing it just didn't make it in time, but I like stories , no matter how small, but keep them interesting, and this one is.

After all, you can check it out here:

Why silver investment coins are worth reaching for

So how to save on investments? You can't exactly do well with gold, but fortunately, there's silver. Cheaper, but it appreciates just as well in bad times. So instead of my original intention, to buy a 1/25 oz gold Czech Lion investment coin for around €120, I'm taking my own advice again and buying a silver investment ounce Czech Lev 2022 - Anniversary coin.

The silver is ruthenium plated and the lion silhouette is gold plated. It is double plated. And it shows it off, the contrast has increased.  What are we going to say - this coin is simply beautiful, I would say almost breathtaking. I'm a layman, I'm just learning, but this time I succumbed more to emotion than reason, the beauty just wowed me. In case you, like me, didn't know exactly what ruthenium is, I learned at the Czech Mint that it is the rarest of the triad of platinum metals. Sounds good, doesn't it? The rarest...

And something else is interesting. It's a 2022 issue, but it didn't come out until 2023. I don't know exactly why, I'm just guessing it just didn't make it in time, but I like stories , no matter how small, but keep them interesting, and this one is.

After all, you can check it out here:

This beautiful coin cost me 62€, which made up for the higher purchase last month and I'm averaging back to the hundred I decided to +/- invest once a month.

I'm curious to see how my second investment in precious metal coins will fare. We'll talk about that in a month.