LIVING OFF DIVIDENDS & PASSIVE INCOME

I recently mentioned that I made $500 dollars last month from online advertising. Rather than use that money to expand or improve my lifestyle (also knows as “buying crap”), I decided to invest it in something that has intrinsic value.

The US Dollar has losing value over the past 2 years. Just today the Dollar index dropped to its lowest recorded value of 77 and I think its going to keep on dropping. Typically precious metals like Gold, Silver and Platinum do well in times of a weak currecny.

Why do I think the Dollar will continue to weaken?
Because the economy sucks and is being manipulated in wierd ways. To quote someone quoting the late Dr. Richebacher, a smart and wealthy economist,

In part as a marketing exercise, The Royal Canadian Mint has produced a $1 million face value coin containing 100kg of .99999 pure gold.

With gold currently trading at $660 per ounce and each kilogram containing 31.1 ounces, the actual cost of the gold in the coin is worth just over $2.5 million USD!

It seems to be part of a marketing exercise to promote its .99999 pure gold Maple Leaf bullion coin. Current Maple Leaf gold coins are .9999 pure. In contrast, South African Krugerrands, while containing a full ounce of fine gold, are only .9167 percent pure with the balance made up with copper, so they actually weigh more than an ounce.

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As most of you know, I’ve been buying a lot of Gold and Silver coins on Ebay. I recently won a bid for a British half-sovereign. Don’t know why, but I didn’t realize that it was a half-sovereign until AFTER I had paid for it via Paypal.

I like to collect the regular sovereigns which are quite small to begain with [around the size of a nickel] so the half-sovereigns must be really tiny. Anyway, I sent the seller a email requesting him to cancel the sale and refund my money. Surprizingly he agreed and he didn’t even take me up on my offer to rebate him the listing fees [since it was my mistake].

So far my experience of buying coins on ebay has been extremely positive. But as usual, you need to be careful and make sure you don’t over pay for sometime. It nearly happened to me last week, where I overbid for something. Luckily someone else beat my bid later on and saved me!!!! [It wasn’t a big amount, but why overpay when you can get a deal?]

I got my first Morgan Silver Dollar today. Morgans are beautiful, large and allegedly the most popular collectible coin in the US today. This particular specimen was minted in 1896 making around a 110 years old. Its in pretty good condition for a coin of that age. Considering I only paid $21 for it, I’d say its a great deal too!

It has the liberty face on one side and an eagle on the other. Because of the eagles’ somewhat scrawny appearance, they used to be called buzzards! Its called the Morgan after the dude who designed the coin.

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Gold has retreated quite a bit since its high of $730 on May 11th 2006. Its currently trading around $630/oz. I see this as a good buying opportunity. While I’m against dollar cost averaging, I think gold is in the beginning of a bull cycle and this justifies buying on dips.

I recently bought another Australian Lunar Series coin. This time I got the Dog. Also got it in the Silver coin and surprizing the species of dog is different on both of them.

Anyway, I also bought some gold British Sovereigns [around 100+ years old], some French and Swiss francs and an 1873 Danish “Mermaid” Coin.

I also bought a 200 yr old gold coin of Napolean Boneparte! [Ok maybe I’m going nuts with this gold coin stuff, but its hard to stop buying those damn things now!] Better stop now before the wife gets upset!

Robert Kiyosaki has a column on why he’s buying in gold. I don’t know why it has tomorrow’s date on it, but its pretty interesting nonetheless.

Bet on Gold, Not on Funny Money
by Robert KiyosakiTuesday, July 25, 2006

Gold recently dropped more than $100, or 14 percent, after hitting a 26-year high of $730 in mid-May. With that drop in price, I became a buyer of gold once again.

Can the price of gold go lower? Absolutely. If it drops to $500 an ounce, I’ll buy more. Let me tell you why.

But first, to give you some background, I’ve been in the gold market since 1971, when then-President Nixon took the U.S. dollar off the gold standard. Back then, gold was pegged at $35 an ounce, and ran to a high of $850 an ounce by January 1980. In the same period, silver hit approximately $40 an ounce.

Regular readers will know that I’ve been investing in gold since gold was in $500/Oz. I advised some readers not to jump in at $720 but wait for a pull-back. Well it pulled back from $720 to around $570 and then jumped up a bit. Today it settled around $620 and I bought a little bit more. As I previously mentioned, I like the perth mint Lunar series for the 1 Oz Gold as well as the 1 Oz Silver coins.

This time however, I bought the US mint $50 1 Oz Buffalo Coins. Its the first time the US Mint has made 99.99% pure 24K 1 Oz gold coins. I bought them already certified by PCGS as “First Strike MS-69″.

Bought a 1 ounce silver dragon coin on Ebay. Its a beautiful coin, minted by the Perth Mint in Australia. [As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m a big fan of the Perth Mint’s Golden Lunar Series.]

Don’t know why I bought it. Maybe its because I like shiny things. I think silver prices might jump 50% over the next 3 years but the 1 ounce silver is current worth about $9.25 and the coin was just under $20 with shipping and insurance. I definitely won’t make my fortune with a $20 coin. But I guess its better than blowing money a DVD. Or is it??

Anyone else out there who likes collecting coins?

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As I’ve mentioned before I think the US is going to enter a period of inflation and recession brought on by the trade & budget deficit and precipitated by the devaluing dollar.

Both Oil and Gold have been in a slow and quiet bull market for the past few years. Historically both of them have been rising & falling in tandem and I believe that both of them have quite a bit further to go. I know that people [Iran’s oil minister, a few economists and the all-knowing Steve Forbes] have been bearish on the price of oil for the past year now but it keeps going up. I think both oil and gold have a lot of room for further appreciation especially if the US Dollar devalues. It may be showing current strength, but I think thats just a short-term spike.