07-05-2021, 01:50 PM
LOTS of things WILL be "essential," in an extended, grid-down type "Postman" scenario. Food, medicine, clean water, shelter, firearms & ammo, PRIME among them. Without THOSE items, life will be harsh, brutal, and probably very short - making THIS article, superfluous.
But if you'll recall, in "The Postman," there were towns (Pineville, Bridge City), where some semblance of order & 'normalcy' existed. Even Gen. Bethlehem's army had an encampment, where life - while perhaps brutal in the ranks - still had a routine.
If the SlowJoe / BlowHo insurrection "succeeds" (according to the Cloward/Piven playbook ), we might ALL find ourselves in JUST such a lovely predicament. "Barter" becomes the predominant economics of the day, and just like today with our fiat currency, we ALL want the BEST deal (bang) for our buck.
Our "Chucky Cheeze" currency may hold some value... for a little while. But eventually, greenbacks (Federal Reserve notes - "FRN" hereafter) will return to their basic intrinsic value - ZERO. MUCH like the hyper-inflated Zimbabwe dollars, I suppose we COULD put them to good use thereafter, as toilet paper.
Because make NO mistake, the road to hyperinflation ALWAYS leads to OUTRAGEOUSLY denominated currency, before the system implodes completely.
"Well that's AFRICA," you say - the HOME of the original tin-pot dictator. "Such a thing could NEVER happen here in the 'civilized' WESTERN world." It DID... but YOU might be too young to remember it, and you'd better BELIEVE your gummint-controlled ejumakayshun NEVER taught you anything more than, "Nazi men BAD!!!!"
The hyperinflation crisis of 1923, led to such famous pictures as this: The young lady is burning BUNDLES of Wiemar Republic marks, as they were more USEFUL for keeping warm, than they were for their purchasing power. One MILLION was a huge number in those days. I actually have this much smaller 100,000 mark bill on my gunsafe - above the 50,000,000,000,000 Zimbabwe note - to remind me of the INTRINSIC value of ALL paper - from the east & from the west.
Now the good news... in the short term again, is that Federal Reserve Chucky Cheeze tokens (post 1964 clad-coinage) doesn't lose value QUITE as quickly as FRN-denominated toilet paper! Argentina's foray into hyperinflation for the last decade has shown this, as has our OWN MOST recent experience, with Controlla Virus! The reason being three-fold;
1) the gummint can't simply stamp a NEW value onto a coin (Wiemar Republic postage stamp - another gummint entity - demonstrating the same. COUNT on even "Forever stamps" being LIKEWISE re-stamped)
2) Ramping up coin production is a LOT harder than simply hitting "copy" on the Treasury Department's FRN photocopier. Dies are only good for 5k-20k coins at a time, depending on the hardness of the metals being stamped, so breakage, stoppages, & replacement times, slow down the coin production.
3) EVEN clad coinage and base metals (nickle & copper - the two primary ingredients of clad coinage) HAVE some value, even if it takes MORE of it; making even Chucky Cheeze tokens MORE valuable than FRN toilet paper!
To wit, here's a daily updated website, that lists not ONLY the value of American silver coinage for the past century (older silver coins - depending on size - have roughly the SAME amount / value of silver in them as well. There are some oddball coins out there, like, half-dimes, 20 cent pieces, trade dollars, etc. - that have oddball weights to them. These generally have greater numismatic (collecting) value to them, are nominally scarce, and less likely to be encountered. As far as determining their weights go, this will be dealt with below), but also currently produced CLAD coinage.
As this screenshot demonstrates, clad coinage has value.
Notice ALSO, how much you're getting ripped off, vis-a-vis CONSTITUTIONAL money (gold & silver - as specified to be the ONLY legal currency in the United States!). What qualifies as a "dollar" these days (Sacagewea / Presidential coins), contain $.07 worth of (mostly) Zinc in them. The clad Eisenhower dollars of the 1970's, have ALMOST a quarter's worth of metal in them, while an actual quarter, is worth little more than a nickel.
Now a nickel, curiously enough, has almost $6 worth of metal in it! The thickness of the coin, means it contains more copper, which is close to an all-time high in price presently - hence the reason these clad coins have ANY metallic value at all. Which is why your old pennies - like all those wheat pennies that EVERYONE'S been saving for years - are worth almost triple their face value at present.
The switch over to the zinc disk occurred midway through 1982, so it's possible to get a copper OR zinc penny dated "1982," but they're ALL zinc since 1983. And as the zinc pennies are worth about .007 cents in metal, making sure you're NOT getting ripped off - by 428% - MIGHT be a GOOD thing! ANOTHER good website, with indispensable information for our present endeavor, is right here. This site not only looks at ALL U.S. coins, but describes them by size & weight (in grams). Numerous charts, for more handy reference, can also be found with a basic search. If you find one that works for you, consider laminating it, for that day The Postman can deliver the mail, but NOT the interwebz!
ALSO cross-reference this article here - and reprinted here - regarding weights, conversion, and compositions, regarding precious metals!
So besides your handy reference chart of coin weights and composition, what is this OTHER, "essential tool" for post-SHTF? Clearly, a SCALE!
AGAIN, if your bullets, beans, & band-aids AREN'T in order, you have higher priorities to attend to. If you think you might ENJOY being a buck private in Gen. Bethlehem's army... well... more power to ya'. This article probably isn't for you.
HOWEVER... if you think that homesteading in a small community, with the wife, kids, and some manner of home-based business on the side (small farm, barter, pawn, repair & maintenance, first aid, etc.), MIGHT be a good thing - AND - you DON'T plan on doing such things out of the goodness of your heart - at your OWN & family's expense - than you MIGHT want a way to make sure you're remunerated at an HONEST rate!
Manual scales, while not IMPOSSIBLE to find - are rarely designed to weigh coins any more. If you saw this episode of Pawn Stars, you saw a GREAT explanation of what such scales were used for & why. It's worth catching on a re-run if you can. Because the counterweights are fixed, it's EASY to tell right away, whether a coin weighs TRUE or not. If you reload ammo, you might already have a manual or digital powder scale, that COULD be used for the same purpose. It might take a little RE-engineering to make it work for this cause, but if you KNOW how it works, than you'll KNOW what you need to do.
A good small (preferably) flexible ruler, that measures in millimeters, is another useful tool. A coin that doesn't measure true (accounting for wear), is another dead giveaway of a fake coin (particularly with silver coins, which the Chinese are faking in GREAT quantities these days).
But if you don't reload, & you can't find any 300 year old Dutch scales at YOUR local Pawn Shop, there is a modern tool, that will set you back about $3,915 LESS than the one that Rick bought. If you work with any local coin shops, you'll see the employees who do the BUYING with one on them at ALL times, and that is, a little digital electronic scale.
This TPO-100 is somewhat common, and very accurate. Buyer BEWARE - like MOST things electronic these days, it's made in China.
Looks SOMETHING like this on the inside (models vary).
Useful for measuring coins or jewelry (handy for your post-SHTF garage-based pawn shop!), it IS battery-powered, which will be its drawback with heavy use. Stockpile according - rechargeables especially, if you get a model that runs on something other than button batteries. And since we ALL know that 2 is 1, and 1 is NONE, at $15 +/- a pop, if you WANNA be serious about your payment, be serious enough to have a back-up for it!
A good starting point to see what's available, is this recent "best-of" article detailing 7 possibilities for you. NOTE: most of them are sold by ChinaMart, or the EVIL EMPIRE. If you can find one from another source and starve the beast, more power to ya'!
Because I primarily deal with a reputable local coin shoppe (that's been in business with ONE family since 1959!), and have for 15 years, I note that they always had such a scale on them. And after hearing the story of a local who walked in one day last year with 250 Morgan dollars - that he'd given $5 each for at a flea market... turns out they were ALL, Chinese FAKES! - I decided to splurge, and pick up one of these (gotta get a couple of backups, next!). And as I ended up accumulating some $450 in coins over the past year (couldn't stuff 'em in the drivethrough at the bank), that I just RECENTLY rolled and deposited, I decided to try out the scale on all the 1982 pennies. I ended up setting ASIDE, and ENTIRE roll of '82 copper pennies out of that bunch! So rather than GIVE the bank an extra free dollar on me, I just deposited the worthless zinc discs with them. Held onto my nickels, too.
It may not seem of much use to you at the MOMENT. I weighed all my '82 pennies one night, while watching "Air Disasters" - it seemed better to be multi-tasking, than vegetating in front of the screen. But someday... soon... ALL those "junk" silver coins you've been accumulating, will need to be VERIFIED - especially if someone wants to buy something of YOURS with some.
DON'T get stuck with a Chinese Morgan "dollar;" get your scale(s) while it's cheap, and practice a bit with it. You won't be able to feed your wife and kids during the Apocalypse, with "Chinesium."
But if you'll recall, in "The Postman," there were towns (Pineville, Bridge City), where some semblance of order & 'normalcy' existed. Even Gen. Bethlehem's army had an encampment, where life - while perhaps brutal in the ranks - still had a routine.
If the SlowJoe / BlowHo insurrection "succeeds" (according to the Cloward/Piven playbook ), we might ALL find ourselves in JUST such a lovely predicament. "Barter" becomes the predominant economics of the day, and just like today with our fiat currency, we ALL want the BEST deal (bang) for our buck.
Our "Chucky Cheeze" currency may hold some value... for a little while. But eventually, greenbacks (Federal Reserve notes - "FRN" hereafter) will return to their basic intrinsic value - ZERO. MUCH like the hyper-inflated Zimbabwe dollars, I suppose we COULD put them to good use thereafter, as toilet paper.
Because make NO mistake, the road to hyperinflation ALWAYS leads to OUTRAGEOUSLY denominated currency, before the system implodes completely.
"Well that's AFRICA," you say - the HOME of the original tin-pot dictator. "Such a thing could NEVER happen here in the 'civilized' WESTERN world." It DID... but YOU might be too young to remember it, and you'd better BELIEVE your gummint-controlled ejumakayshun NEVER taught you anything more than, "Nazi men BAD!!!!"
The hyperinflation crisis of 1923, led to such famous pictures as this: The young lady is burning BUNDLES of Wiemar Republic marks, as they were more USEFUL for keeping warm, than they were for their purchasing power. One MILLION was a huge number in those days. I actually have this much smaller 100,000 mark bill on my gunsafe - above the 50,000,000,000,000 Zimbabwe note - to remind me of the INTRINSIC value of ALL paper - from the east & from the west.
Now the good news... in the short term again, is that Federal Reserve Chucky Cheeze tokens (post 1964 clad-coinage) doesn't lose value QUITE as quickly as FRN-denominated toilet paper! Argentina's foray into hyperinflation for the last decade has shown this, as has our OWN MOST recent experience, with Controlla Virus! The reason being three-fold;
1) the gummint can't simply stamp a NEW value onto a coin (Wiemar Republic postage stamp - another gummint entity - demonstrating the same. COUNT on even "Forever stamps" being LIKEWISE re-stamped)
2) Ramping up coin production is a LOT harder than simply hitting "copy" on the Treasury Department's FRN photocopier. Dies are only good for 5k-20k coins at a time, depending on the hardness of the metals being stamped, so breakage, stoppages, & replacement times, slow down the coin production.
3) EVEN clad coinage and base metals (nickle & copper - the two primary ingredients of clad coinage) HAVE some value, even if it takes MORE of it; making even Chucky Cheeze tokens MORE valuable than FRN toilet paper!
To wit, here's a daily updated website, that lists not ONLY the value of American silver coinage for the past century (older silver coins - depending on size - have roughly the SAME amount / value of silver in them as well. There are some oddball coins out there, like, half-dimes, 20 cent pieces, trade dollars, etc. - that have oddball weights to them. These generally have greater numismatic (collecting) value to them, are nominally scarce, and less likely to be encountered. As far as determining their weights go, this will be dealt with below), but also currently produced CLAD coinage.
As this screenshot demonstrates, clad coinage has value.
Notice ALSO, how much you're getting ripped off, vis-a-vis CONSTITUTIONAL money (gold & silver - as specified to be the ONLY legal currency in the United States!). What qualifies as a "dollar" these days (Sacagewea / Presidential coins), contain $.07 worth of (mostly) Zinc in them. The clad Eisenhower dollars of the 1970's, have ALMOST a quarter's worth of metal in them, while an actual quarter, is worth little more than a nickel.
Now a nickel, curiously enough, has almost $6 worth of metal in it! The thickness of the coin, means it contains more copper, which is close to an all-time high in price presently - hence the reason these clad coins have ANY metallic value at all. Which is why your old pennies - like all those wheat pennies that EVERYONE'S been saving for years - are worth almost triple their face value at present.
The switch over to the zinc disk occurred midway through 1982, so it's possible to get a copper OR zinc penny dated "1982," but they're ALL zinc since 1983. And as the zinc pennies are worth about .007 cents in metal, making sure you're NOT getting ripped off - by 428% - MIGHT be a GOOD thing! ANOTHER good website, with indispensable information for our present endeavor, is right here. This site not only looks at ALL U.S. coins, but describes them by size & weight (in grams). Numerous charts, for more handy reference, can also be found with a basic search. If you find one that works for you, consider laminating it, for that day The Postman can deliver the mail, but NOT the interwebz!
ALSO cross-reference this article here - and reprinted here - regarding weights, conversion, and compositions, regarding precious metals!
So besides your handy reference chart of coin weights and composition, what is this OTHER, "essential tool" for post-SHTF? Clearly, a SCALE!
AGAIN, if your bullets, beans, & band-aids AREN'T in order, you have higher priorities to attend to. If you think you might ENJOY being a buck private in Gen. Bethlehem's army... well... more power to ya'. This article probably isn't for you.
HOWEVER... if you think that homesteading in a small community, with the wife, kids, and some manner of home-based business on the side (small farm, barter, pawn, repair & maintenance, first aid, etc.), MIGHT be a good thing - AND - you DON'T plan on doing such things out of the goodness of your heart - at your OWN & family's expense - than you MIGHT want a way to make sure you're remunerated at an HONEST rate!
Manual scales, while not IMPOSSIBLE to find - are rarely designed to weigh coins any more. If you saw this episode of Pawn Stars, you saw a GREAT explanation of what such scales were used for & why. It's worth catching on a re-run if you can. Because the counterweights are fixed, it's EASY to tell right away, whether a coin weighs TRUE or not. If you reload ammo, you might already have a manual or digital powder scale, that COULD be used for the same purpose. It might take a little RE-engineering to make it work for this cause, but if you KNOW how it works, than you'll KNOW what you need to do.
A good small (preferably) flexible ruler, that measures in millimeters, is another useful tool. A coin that doesn't measure true (accounting for wear), is another dead giveaway of a fake coin (particularly with silver coins, which the Chinese are faking in GREAT quantities these days).
But if you don't reload, & you can't find any 300 year old Dutch scales at YOUR local Pawn Shop, there is a modern tool, that will set you back about $3,915 LESS than the one that Rick bought. If you work with any local coin shops, you'll see the employees who do the BUYING with one on them at ALL times, and that is, a little digital electronic scale.
This TPO-100 is somewhat common, and very accurate. Buyer BEWARE - like MOST things electronic these days, it's made in China.
Looks SOMETHING like this on the inside (models vary).
Useful for measuring coins or jewelry (handy for your post-SHTF garage-based pawn shop!), it IS battery-powered, which will be its drawback with heavy use. Stockpile according - rechargeables especially, if you get a model that runs on something other than button batteries. And since we ALL know that 2 is 1, and 1 is NONE, at $15 +/- a pop, if you WANNA be serious about your payment, be serious enough to have a back-up for it!
A good starting point to see what's available, is this recent "best-of" article detailing 7 possibilities for you. NOTE: most of them are sold by ChinaMart, or the EVIL EMPIRE. If you can find one from another source and starve the beast, more power to ya'!
Because I primarily deal with a reputable local coin shoppe (that's been in business with ONE family since 1959!), and have for 15 years, I note that they always had such a scale on them. And after hearing the story of a local who walked in one day last year with 250 Morgan dollars - that he'd given $5 each for at a flea market... turns out they were ALL, Chinese FAKES! - I decided to splurge, and pick up one of these (gotta get a couple of backups, next!). And as I ended up accumulating some $450 in coins over the past year (couldn't stuff 'em in the drivethrough at the bank), that I just RECENTLY rolled and deposited, I decided to try out the scale on all the 1982 pennies. I ended up setting ASIDE, and ENTIRE roll of '82 copper pennies out of that bunch! So rather than GIVE the bank an extra free dollar on me, I just deposited the worthless zinc discs with them. Held onto my nickels, too.
It may not seem of much use to you at the MOMENT. I weighed all my '82 pennies one night, while watching "Air Disasters" - it seemed better to be multi-tasking, than vegetating in front of the screen. But someday... soon... ALL those "junk" silver coins you've been accumulating, will need to be VERIFIED - especially if someone wants to buy something of YOURS with some.
DON'T get stuck with a Chinese Morgan "dollar;" get your scale(s) while it's cheap, and practice a bit with it. You won't be able to feed your wife and kids during the Apocalypse, with "Chinesium."
Meet ya' at the bridge.