Jan

26

GoldOne of the best gold stories from the 1970s was when Arthur Ashe beat 19 year old Bjorn Borg in the WCT tournament in Dallas and won a solid gold tennis ball worth $33,000. Ashe kept it and it wasn't too long before gold was selling around $800 dollars an ounce and the ball was worth close to 1 million dollars.

Jeff Watson reminisces:

I bought a lot of physical gold back in 1979-80 and my position has been underwater ever since. My gold-bug friend told me that I'm finally making money in the gold market, as it's taken out its old highs. I explained to him that with inflation, storage and cost of carry, I'd never get out from being underwater. Luckily, I still find looking at and feeling the actual gold to be rather invigorating.

Alan Millhone agrees:

Yep, nothing like feeling the heft of a roll of Maple Leafs in ones hand.. I knew an old barber years ago from Middleport, Ohio who went West every year to prospect on his vacation and made enough each trip to pay for his expenses and his vacation. He was a coin collector as well and he is long gone, as is his fine collection. 


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3 Comments so far

  1. Anatoly Veltman on January 26, 2008 5:36 pm

    Your story was entertaining; but numbers lacked precision. Bretton Woods price was $35. 1976-1980 bull move was $101->$875: so thirty-fold appreciation would be out of the range…

    Platinum's Friday price $1691 = 1.618x $1045, its 1980 Nymex record! This S.Africa electricity dilemma is quite a long-term story; one can surely read into it that no new operations will get government approval from now on, especially until 2010 World Cup plays out. The mines may come back on-line next week; but they will be out of commission sporadicly the remainder of this season.

  2. Q on January 27, 2008 7:36 pm

    Much to my chagrin I keep hearing from friends and acquaintainces how their money managers are putting more of their money into gold, or investing it directly themselves. Unfortunately it’s something they will probably have to stay in for the very short term. A friend who concentrates as opposed to diversifying swears by going very long in gold and continues to hold. His reasoning is that with the volatility of the markets amateurs will seek recourse more and more in gold, particularly as the baby boomers will be set to retire and as such mandatory huge sell off’s - especially from 401(k)s - will out balance buys with ensuing pandemic panic and thus he bets - albeit I think his strategy is more akin to gambling - that gold will go up to $2k and possibly into the stratosphere at $5k. His strategies pertaining to gold and other assets have very worked thus far in recent years by concentrating, however I see no reason why gold should go up any further and speculate that gold will cycle sooner rather than later. Silver on the other hand is another story.

  3. Pitt Maner on January 28, 2008 1:00 pm

    Forgive my poor memory and embellishment. Arthur Ashe actually was awarded two gold tennis balls in 1975 that weighed 372 ounces each. In 2005 Southeby’s put them up for auction as part of Mr. Ashe’s estate.

    At gold’s highest price in that timeframe the gold tennis balls would, I believe, have been worth around $600,000 but perhaps some collectible value later was attached to them that further elevated their worth in the eyes of prospective buyers.

    Here they are:

    http://www.pcgs.com/articles/article4434.chtml

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