Hard Money Newsletter Review

Investment Underground, published by Contrarian Profits, another offshoot (this one genetically) of the Agora ‘Goliath’ is another one, you can skip.

We silver coin investors are a funny bunch. You see, folks lucky enough to have figured out a way and a place to store what little wealth they have left over have come to this from many a direction.

Typically, we are contrarian to begin with, salt of the earth types, with not a lot of extra income lying around to gamble with.

But there is a world that opens up around you when you discover the simplicity in holding silver. (Whether that world is above or below is a matter of debate).

Many find the idea of buying physical silver for investment uncomfortable and about as appealing as a romp through the wilderness on foot that leads to a campsite in the middle of nowhere.

This is okay with us because, as a group, we like low-impact wilderness and the lessons learned in fending for oneself. This includes a level of a preparedness that comes only after considerable thought and research.

As much as we might otherwise find the plushness of the towering casinos and the allure of the fancier things in life, our resource-circumstance limits us to a different existence.

However, we are never fully disconnected from the bright lights, big cities, and indoor pluming – no more than silver can be eliminated from most of inner workings that make these modern wonders possible.

Therefore, our quest includes the need to know how our precious metal functions in the modern world, whether we are considering the markets, the industries that use silver, or the greater macro-economic or geopolitical trends that influence the value of our little stash of silver coins.

So in the quest for knowledge, there is much crossover, and we invariably come across letters and publications like “Investment Underground” – and so will you.

When you have a passion for this market, and an open curiosity, it’s easy to lose a sense of oneself and find yourself pouring over an investment offer carefully designed to lure you in.

Have fun with it. For there will perhaps come a day for this in the not-too-distant future – when you find yourself in a position to ‘leverage’ your silver coin investment. When that day comes, you’ll likely return to this email newlsetter. But for now, here’s the deal:

First off, when you sign up for investment underground,(watch the pop-up),you get a pretty steady flurry of content in your inbox.

And this part of a well-oiled machine. So, you can sit back and dabble a little from time to time – pick out a headline and then leave it be.

This is information marketing at its best. So, you’ll need to learn how to read with your silver coin identity firmly entrenched and allow yourself to dream a little, while checking any remorse for not being able to gamble – at the door.

Much of the content is specifically designed to hook you into reading and then, clicking. More often not, you get stuck reading what turns out to be an advertisement for one or another investing program.

Also, if you’ve read Addison Wiggin or will Bonner over at the Daily Reckoning or if you simply keep up with Chuck Butler’s Daily Pfennig, you can get the gist of what these e-mails cover in a broad macro-sense. You can pretty much stick with those guys. You’ll get the same message:

With the recent and ongoing financial crisis, and the amount of information sloshing around out there, crossing in and out and overlapping with similar content to Investment Underground, it makes it even more strenuous to put up with a message that shoots a little bit to the side or over the head of the typical silver investor.

And as much as I’d like to support the family affair (Will Bonner is Bill Bonner’s son), things must, at some point, come back down to earth for the silver coin investor.

Well, unfortunately for them, it doesn’t speak loud enough to the average investor.

In that most of us are just looking for a way to acquire a few more coins, and get a better understanding of how and why and what goes on in the macro world and how it affects our small world.

We need to make the connections between the broad market conditions and how they impact things that matter most to us like, silver supply tightness, industrial versus investor demand, and the ongoing and relentless price manipulation.

Of course, very few investing news sources currently give the time to those specific areas of interest, but we believe in time they will as more people will need to know.

Like many other newsletter publications, and yes, this one is free (so what could it hurt to try it out), they seem better directed toward where a lot of us are likely to be in a year. Further down along the way, maybe coming up out of the canyon, a little heavier with a few more coins on board.

But again, for the average silver investor, who has a sense of why silver is important, and where it will likely go in terms of price. You can probably skip this one.

Updated 9-21-09

Before I began investing in silver coins, I made sure that I had a modest handle on the market lingo. And there is a lot of lingo.

Sometimes the best way to approach any new thing is to jump in and take it about as far as you can go.

Some information is friendlier than others when it comes to the ‘lingo’.

When you jump right in, you can find out fast what you don’t know. Then you can study it, live with it a little, and then come back around to it look at from a different (usually larger) perspective.

That’s the beauty of most these free newsletters. Especially when you have to think a little.

Which is part of why I review them for you!

Look, a lot of the people who write about the hard money world live and breath these markets everyday – and they write as a natural extension of their day to day thought process.

If they can also manage to set up a system whereby they deliver this to you efficiently, then everyone benefits. Even the newly initiated.

Jim Sinclair and the JSMineset is a case in point.

Nothing flashy here, he covers gold broadly. This means that you’ll find a lot of technical stuff.

But it is just the right amount of technical to keep the learning curve high.

He’s been around this block and is one of these players who can’t help but produce useful (if more advanced) content and perspective about this sector. So he doesn’t really need a lot of words.

There are other contributors and an archive section that works.

Dan Norcini is one of these contributors. You can also find him over at the Daily Reckoning.

Of course, like us, Mr. Sinclair is a bull. And he while he doesn’t cover Silver quite as directly a silver bug would like – we are appreciative and ever-ready to interpret our world through the plight of the yellow metal.

This is one of those places to jump in and get some perspective. Sign-up for his updates. They are well-worth the follow.

Just remember, if you are like me (and Mr. Sinclair), you realize that is more important to consider physical gold and/or silver free of outside liability before anything else. Buy it. Hold it. And, keep it out of the hands of others.

The email newsletter, Whiskey and Gun Powder, is one you can safely add to your list of news that must be read on a weekly basis – no matter who you are or where you lie in this new social order.
In the hard money world, we have separate, yet related languages for how we discuss gold and silver.

This language gives rise to a spectrum of information ranging from the professional investor to the curious amateur-local-yocal-market-observer. Like us.

Those interested in precious metals for asset protection or as a long-term investment need open discussion of the important issues -from all perspectives.

On one hand, gold (and especially silver) are industrial commodities and with the forces that influence the way they trade.

On the other hand, gold and silver have always been money – at least as far as civilization goes.

Currencies trade on the world platform, influenced (and manipulated) according to how the central banks see fit and much of this is on the grand stage of politics.

You probably know some of the bartenders.

We chose three letters for this review – all from the week of July 7. In the midst of summer doldrums, yet in the calm before a storm that seems even more likely on its way.

‘Whiskey’ is an Agora product. It is one of many, and true to form, you get outstanding content with some (gentle) persuasion to reciprocate.

Our only beef is the overly-strategic ’special reports’, interesting stories in and of themselves, but dropped in on the articles.

These are sometimes sent out as separate email offers all together – which are perhaps a better way to cut to the chase.

The overall content certainly appeals to the broad audience – indeed attracting those who are interested in the energy, agriculture, and commodities sectors.

They cover the macro news and politics. And the big companies, the broader economic sectors, as well as gold and silver.

I suppose there are those who routinely stop at the coin shop in order to pick up a few ounces here and there, when the money is available – who might rationalize that the big picture stuff might be a little disconnected from the main street perspective.

Not us.

Our keen manipulation sensors pick up on the basic messages and see them through to the relationship they have to the word on the street.

The whiskey guys deliver more of the news and views that matter:

For gold, they they make the cross-over from commodities to currency without completetly ignoring the politics. We imply the same for silver and understand that our little market attracts less visitors.
Bottom line:

We recommend that you go sign-up (link: http://whiskeyandgunpowder.com/sign-up-free/

It’s practically a necesity and friendly face in your inbox.

A filter for that serves investor diversity, and remains true for the man on the street who just wants to protect what little he has and read a little news to reinforce the vision.

And who knows, when us little guys make it big, we’ll be sure to play some of the options, click on the offers that make the Agora world go around.

Bill’s Blog is run by Bill Haynes, of CMI Gold And Silver.

Based out of Phoenix,  this is well organized ‘big-bullion-business-blog’,  that advocates physical possession.

We need them, we like them, we recommend them.

Okay. So,  we haven’t ordered from them yet. But we probably will.

Their main business, CMI Gold & Silver, deals in coins and bullion. They can deal in size.

As you know,  we are of local coin shop people.  We happily buy and hold silver – taking it off the hands of those who simply don’t yet see the value of this precious commodity and monetary asset.

I must say that, as much as we scorn the likes of Thomas Friedman, CMI Gold & Silver’ success is probably attributable to the ‘flattening’ of things  due to technology.

If you try them from a distance and they ‘feel’ local enough for you, let me know and we will update this post.

Haynes, who has been around the block (40 years in this), has the market down and serves our mission of letting the masses know about ‘these precious’ opportunities.

He shares the our vision of ‘monetary inevitability’ (lots of inflation), which should be all anyone needs to understand the urgency for taking action and thereby protecting your purchasing power.

Even if Bill’s Blog is not quite as outspoken on price manipulation as GATA, the main website features a must-read overview of how PM purchases are recorded and accounted for by the IRS. This was very cool.

A very interesting review for those of us who have been hell-bent on taking whatever we can out of the system for the long-haul.

But let us not digress.

The blog features, in addition to biweekly posts, a Free Newsletter (which we are collecting) and one-click-ready-access-to-the-bullion-goods when you need to make a purchase pronto.

The main website offers gold and silver bullion in practically every form – outside of the numismatic.

They also cover platinum and palladium too for those interested.

I used 3 recent posts and an ‘old one’ from the archives to build this review.

The first post, US News Interviews Ron Paul About The Fed- went up June 25th, 2009

This was a short, news item alert and one that slipped past the ’sensors’ that reinforces and points to an important Ron Paul interview.

As intended, this the interview makes the post worthwhile and we thank Bill for this.

And it pretty much sealed our support for what Paul is up to.

The next post we reviewed was Congress To Approve IMF Gold Sales.

Coming to you from 35,000 ft, the politics of gold make for an even happier silver bug, given than politicos will not have a enough time to act once silver does it’s thing.

Personally, I wonder why the IMF wouldn’t be stocking gold, rather than gearing up to sell, but the article linked in this post helps put things in perspective and actually makes the case for the  release IMF gold, which might spark central bank competition between two lurching giants.

Another good catch, Bill.

The last recent post we reviewed was this one, from early June, Northwestern Mutual Buys Gold.

This one is super short and seems to acknowledge that while gold and silver bugs need little reassurance about the future, these kind of announcements don’t hurt the prospects.

And finally, we looked at a post from January, 2009 – The Collapse of ‘09

We are glad we did – and thrilled that Haynes demonstrates equal-opportunity treatment for silver.

The post points to a serious  Lee Rockwell podcast. It is a do-able length for us, but we highly recommend  keeping all sharp objects hidden and out of reach.

Okay, so bottom line: We recommend this blog.

It is clean, organized, simple to navigate, and well-written. We’ve bookmarked it. You should too.

Bill targets the natural (larger) audience, but makes no bones about silver.

This is not for miners or those of the numismatic persuasion.

There were very few (if any) comments on the posts themselves.

The tone is (we think rightly) bullish overall, but Bill’s Blog shows a willingness to assert his personality and fairly question his resources.

You won’t see much in-depth conspiracy monologue here, but we learned something about the PM story from the political realm, which we all need a dose from now and then – no matter how bad it tastes.

We’ll be following, and recommend it for those serious about diversifying a large cash position. If that’s you, and/or you are new to this, Bill’s Blog is a good place to be.