Before I got involved in the gold business, I had a special relationship with gold that stretched back through my family for over a 100 years. I received my first gold from the estate of my father, who passed away when I was just 11 years old. He left me 5 shiny gold sovereign coins and a lot of great memories.
The coins had been given to my father by his father. I was told that they were precious and to take great care of them. We had been a wealthy trading family from the village of Terenure in Dublin, since the 1800s. Our family ran the biggest village pub, a chemist, and a grocer. The family even paid for water to be piped to the village and built the first local cinema alongside other businesspeople. Unfortunately, like so many others we lost most of our wealth in the hard recessions of the 1980s.
But the family gold endured.
From the age of 11, I knew the power and endurance that gold represented and that it had stayed within my family for generations. It had survived when everything else was lost to time.
I still have those gold coins today and I am always amazed at the weight of them, so heavy for their size and with that un-explainable attractive quality of its deep rich golden glow. I will be passing them on to my three sons in time.
As the years passed, I have invested in stocks, property, currencies, established and sold businesses, but my mind would always go back to my father’s gold coins.
Whenever I held them in my hand, I knew I could quickly find a buyer for them, should the need ever arise. I knew that the price would be fair, and I wouldn’t be ripped off. I knew that I could take my gold with me wherever I went and I knew that if I was in Ireland, England the US, or anywhere else, it would be recognized and I could realize its value in cash if needed. I knew that it could not be destroyed by fire or flood.
Most importantly I knew that should bankers or politicians misbehave, as they often do, more gold would be bought by those in the know, the price would increase and the value of mine would increase too.
But what about my property or equity investments, I could say the same about that too, or could I?
While most equities are easily sold, the process of selling a property can be slow even at the best of times. I could never guarantee a fair price for my property and I would pay thousands in commissions for the privilege of someone finding me a buyer. My property wasn’t portable in the same way that gold was, and it required ongoing management and needed to be protected from flood and fire.
…and should bankers, company management, or politicians misbehave it could have a negative impact on the value of either my property or equities or both!
Neither, property nor equities were at the same time liquid, portable, and protected me from someone not doing their job effectively and negatively impacting my portfolio!
I needed and valued that certainty and peace of mind that I got from owning gold in my portfolio. It endures. It is financial insurance.
Your decision today to invest in gold may well be spoken about in generations to come and just as I speak to you about my father’s gold coins, I hope my descendants will speak of me and our ancestors and our family gold.
Gold has been an education for me, but as I went out into the world as a young man, I was to learn far more about gold and its important role in everyone’s portfolio.
Article courtesy of Stephen Flood from GoldCore
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