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To: maceng2 who wrote (68776)	1/2/2007 6:47:15 PM
From: Snowshoe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

>>The same amount of gold buys 200 pounds of flour today as it did in Roman times.<< But that stone-ground Roman flour was full of grit that ground down the teeth of those who ate the bread. Thanks to modern hedonics that 200 pounds of flour is much better now than it was in Roman times! Physical gold is like a millstone around the neck. I find it more practical to own NEM or GG, and write calls against it for extra cash.

To: maceng2 who wrote (68776)	1/2/2007 9:30:56 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Producing gold then was hard work. So was producing flour. Production of both has changed phenomenally, so it's quite flukey that the relative prices are about the same. Now, vast tracts of wheat are harvested by rows of monster combine harvesters, and transportation of thousands of tons at a time is done in railways. Huge milling plants turn it to dust at very low cost per unit. On the gold side of the equation, whole mountains are ground to dust with huge trucks carting 50 tons at a time of rock blasted after low cost drilling and explosives enable it to be loaded by enormous excavators. No more do blokes dig with pick and shovel inside a mountain, following a seam of quartz. Mqurice