Aurum will be hard to use in daily life to pay for goods and services, simply because the price of gold fluctuates every 10 minutes and users will not be able to know what the value is at every given moment.
At some point, if/when people stop caring about the dollar, then it won't matter what the USD price of gold is - aurum notes could just be traded directly on their gold content / face value.
I see the utility, especially in a post-USD collapse world. But at this point, my goal is to preserve as much of my wealth as possible, and to do that, I want to minimize my over spot charges. I get Adam's point as to the utility value of why it is over spot, of course, but still the fact remains that if I have $X today, I would be losing a lot of my wealth to the over spot charge vs. buying 1oz sovereign coins with more like a 4% premium over spot.
I probably would not be a buyer other than for the novelty sake until the over spot gets down to around near the over spot of a standard 1/10oz coin (about 12% right now) - maybe I'd go up to 25% over spot, but no higher.
I wonder if there are plans to do similar implanting of other precious metals? Silver? Platinum? Palladium? That would be cool & add some variety.
I make my living as an artist, creating works in which gold leaf is a prominent feature. Naturally when I see the thin Aurum "sheets" of gold I connect and compare it to the gold leafing I regularly buy and work with. I had never really sat down to calculate the cost per gram of the leafing I use, but decided to do so today and thought I'd share the results here to offer a different perspective on the premiums with the Aurum.
I purchase my leafing by the pack, which is 500 sheets. What I'm getting is 23-karat rather than 24-karat, and the brand I use weighs 8 grams per pack of 500 sheets. I'm currently paying about $850 per pack. This is a wholesale price. I would be paying significantly more if I were buying it by the book (25 sheets). I could probably get a bit better price if I bought in much greater quantities.
Anyway, 8 grams for $850 works out to $106.25 per gram. With the Aurum purchased individually the cost of a 1/10 gram unit would be $100 per gram, while buying 10 of the 1/10 gram units would get the lower price of $80 per gram.
So while I would certainly be happy to see the premiums drop on the Aurum in the future, from my perspective they are in line with wholesale gold leafing prices, the other common, thin, low weight gold product out there.
Hi Adam
thanks for sharing this- 10 UK bound.
I've a rough idea of what a post-economic collapse may look like- these may slot nicely into preparations.
Hedge your bets and preserve accordingly… plus the kids will love 'em.
I echo metaforges query of implanting other pms…would be very cool!
Also looking forward starting some meaningful conversations when handed out