Just another Monday

Can gold keep its 2016 rally going?

That is the question as we head into a new week and the final days of the month of February.

There is no magic answer.

We can look to history either to worry ourselves to death or take solace from it. It just depends on what facts we want to look at.

In recent times, the year has usually begun with a dash into gold. The price rises. Then for the rest of the year some or all of these gains are given back.

That might be scary.

But if we take a longer term outlook, the situation changes.

Had I put more than three gold sovereigns aside in 1970 when gold was $35 an ounce, I would have been far better off today.

Back then, the gold in a sovereign was worth just over $8. I could afford to buy the popular British coins from the savings from my paper route.

I could then decide things like the fact that I like the portrait of King George V better than that of Edward VII even though Edward's coin was older.

I did not have a Queen Victoria sovereign. But I studied her reign a bit to see how she fit into things. In many ways, that curiosity about British monarchs continues to this day.

Now the gold coins are worth $284 each, but I don't have them.

Like many coins in the hands of collectors, they were sacrificed to my need for cash as I was growing up.

You might say, they made my life possible.

That can still be said of any gold coin you buy today. You will be better off owning it, especially if it becomes the coin that makes whatever you need to do in your life possible.

That is reassuring. That is gold.

Buzz blogger Dave Harper has twice won the Numismatic Literary Guild Award for Best Blog and is editor of the weekly newspaper "Numismatic News."

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