u/goldbackgurus

Appreciate you, seriously 🙏 Glad everything showed up right. What'd you end up grabbing?

Florida Alphas, nice pull 🪙 Which denoms? If those Arizonas turn out to be Alphas too, that's a solid pair. Keeping them sleeved or any going in the spend pile?

Nice — Pioneer Guru and an Alpha already! 🏅 Which Alpha did you land for the Omega trophy?

Free Goldback coming your way, check your DMs.

Congrats on the first ones. Interested in getting more, and are you leaning collector for now or looking to spend one soon?

Same playbook — rarest year in the safe, rest meant to move. Checking the mintage chart before locking one away is smart. Which Utah year are you treating as the “never spend” right now?

This is the answer. Melt is the worst path on these. Selling to someone who wants the notes usually beats any pawn/jewelry offer by a mile. Curious what “near wholesale” has actually looked like for you when you’ve sold into a group — close to daily rate, or still a haircut?

That’s the whole point for me. A coin you won’t break for groceries isn’t doing the everyday job. Smaller spendable units are boring until you actually try to buy lunch with metal. Curious how many people here have handed one across a counter this month vs just stacking

I think the Arizona 5 is more stacked

https://preview.redd.it/n9mwci2mb6nh1.jpeg?width=1439&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b4ca379da9e8359feb70235d72aee9c27d09f45d

Yeah the short is pretty thin without sound. The useful bit is still in there if you pause it: gold going down as vapor onto the polymer, not ink getting printed. Always wild how little metal is actually on these and it still assays out. Worth a watch once

That’s the vacuum deposition clip. Always wild how thin that gold layer is and it still assays out. First time seeing the process, or did you already know it was deposited instead of printed?

this is not worth stripping.

What you’re seeing is ENIG (electroless nickel immersion gold): a flash of actual gold, typically only ~0.05–0.15 microns thick, over nickel over copper. It’s there so pads don’t oxidize and stay solderable. The traces themselves are still copper. The gold is just a microscopic coating on the exposed pads.

At today’s ~$4,350/oz (~$140/g), the surface gold on that whole board is probably in the $1–$5 range. A little more hides as tiny bond wires inside the ICs. Those big black relays are more interesting to a scrapper — many have silver (or silver-alloy) contacts that can beat the gold flash on a per-board basis.

Don’t chemically recover it at home. For a single board the yield won’t cover chemicals, time, or hazardous-waste disposal, and the acids involved are nasty.

Practical options: - One-off: keep it, or drop it with other e-waste next time you’re at a recycler. Pull the Panasonic coin cell first. - A pile of similar industrial/control boards: sell as mid-grade PCB scrap. US yards are often in the ~$0.50–$2/lb range depending on location and how populated the boards are. - If you already tear stuff down: pull the relays (and any gold-finger connectors) separately. Don’t scrape the traces.

Looks like an industrial control / power-management board, not a high-grade telecom or server card with thick gold fingers — so don’t expect motherboard-tier payout. Real gold, microscopically thin.

We don't know the date. Treat earthquakes and wars as reminders, not a timer. Economic collapse is the part a lot of people get backwards. If the dollar dies, paper cash is a poor store of value — gold and silver hold it better. That does not make cash useless on day one. When cards and ATMs are down and stores are still open, small bills buy gas and food. A gold coin does not.

Split money by job: Cash in $1 / $5 / $10 / $20s for the week dollars still spend Silver for trade if currency fails — pre-1965 90% dimes/quarters or 1 oz rounds. You can make change. Gold to store value, and Goldbacks for daily spend. Physical only, not an ETF. Food, fuel, filters, meds, and skills still beat metal if nobody wants to make change.

You don't need a chip in your skin. Redundancy is metal + cash + goods + people, built before payments get weird.

If the book is the Bible (B.I.B.L.E.), the field-manual version is the same: don't panic, store what you'll use, look after your people.

Most households still skip the first layer: - Water: 1 gal/person/day. Aim for 14 days. Filter + tablets. - Food: 2+ weeks of calories you already eat. Manual can opener. Rotate. - Money: Goldbacks for everyday spend + junk silver for off-network trade + gold coins as savings. Docs in a waterproof pouch. - Meds + first aid. Kids, pets, prescriptions that can't skip a week. - Light/comms: flashlight, batteries, NOAA/hand-crank radio, paper maps. - Skills: purify water, stop bleeding, shut off utilities, cook with no power.

Doomsday is a bad planning horizon. Cover the outage, the storm, and the week the cards don't work. Then add metal for the longer money problem.

Short answer: don’t take them to a jewelry store or pawn shop. The gold is real and can be melted, but that is one of the worst ways to sell Goldbacks quickly.

Feel free to do better. In my experience the ones who only dunk do it because they can’t make anything themselves. Prove me wrong.

Appreciate the detail, that ladder makes a lot more sense than a flat “another 15%.” Splitting a taste above $20 and a bigger bite near $18 is pretty clean. You locking those levels in advance or adjusting once the tape shows up?

Yeah, thin buy-side volume is the part that makes me hesitate too. Drop without bids is a different animal than a drop with people stepping in. You sitting this week out, or still watching for a dip-buy anyway?

Same boat on the new ones. Spending the dups and keeping one of each is how I keep it from getting silly. Which states are you actually willing to spend vs which ones stay locked?

Raw's the way. WY and SD next is interesting. You stacking all the denoms?

8/10. That’s the right call for a prepper stack. Constitutional + 1oz + a 10oz is a solid mix. 44.5683 oz is a sociopathic weigh-in and I respect it. Melt ~$3k. 50 is your next goal. Keep stacking.

B

Those look awesome in hand! UT refresh or Cali hitting you harder in person? You keeping these or are any of them spenders?

Fair, cover was the wrong word. More like it added fuel once it was already moving. Another 15% is a real chunk. You scaling that in or waiting for one fill?

Silverbacks too? That's a different hunt. You stacking graded or raw on those? Still curious which state's the one you were actually chasing.

That’s a real haul! Cali in the mix and a pile of sleeved 1/4s. You stacking the 1s or are those the spenders? Which state’s the one you were actually hunting?

That tracks. Limit sitting at resistance for weeks, it finally tags, and the speech gives cover for the dump. You filling back in lower or waiting it out?