Re: Gold
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: HOGGHEAD</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: High Binder</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> If Europe can hurry up and fail it should trigger a jump in gold prices but if they keep stalling, I suspect we'll see gold just hover like it's been doing for a month now. If Europe is 'saved' I suspect we'll see the price drop
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IMO you have it completely wrong. I beleive gold prices are tied to the dollar. And as the value of the dollar get worse the price of Gold goes up. I believe if the Euro falters(which I believe it will) then that will stregthen the dollar. With a stronger dollar Gold prices will come down drastically.
That is why I am asking where the best place is to buy Gold. I plan on buying some when that price lowers with a failing Euro. and strengthening dollar. Tom.
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Dont count on that. With global economy, thay are all tied together, and one failing/weakening, will hurt the others as well.
A perfect example of that is this letter I got from a friend who deals in native american arts...
Read the article then think about that....People spent 565 million/over one half billion dollars, on art in two nights. When they are scared, people put their wealth into tangibles....high value things that will increase in value over time....art, gold, real estate....except that real estate is a bust and will likely remain that way for many years. All that money that was stolen is sstill out there and the wealthy are looking for havens....gold, art. It aint about to drop anytime soon.
Silver is ok, but gold has been the standard for 5000 years, and with the exception of enriched uraniun and plutonium, will most likely remain the standard. Guns are ok, not as investments, but as security (at least til the cops come and confiscate them like after Katrina), but you can only use so many .....and they are trickier to store.
<span style="font-size: 14pt"> <span style="color: #FF0000">Article here..... </span> </span>
As Stocks Fall, Art Surges at a $315.8 Million Sale
Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s principal auctioneer, took bids for Clyfford Still’s “1949-A-No..1.” It sold for $
Despite (or perhaps because of) the stock market’s nearly 400-point plunge, on Wednesday night collectors raced to put their available cash — and lots of it.
Sotheby’s evening sale, the last of the week’s three big-money evening auctions, achieved the company’s third-highest total for a contemporary art sale ever (the highest was in May 2008). It brought record prices for Abstract canvases by Clyfford Still and Gerhard Richter.
“There is a flight out of cash into what is called art,” Richard Feigen, a Manhattan dealer, said after the sale.
The sale totaled $315.8 million, well above its high $270 million estimate. The evening eclipsed Christie’s auction on Tuesday night, where $247.6 million was spent and where Pop Art — works by Lichtenstein and Warhol — reigned. Of the 73 lots for sale at Sotheby’s, 11 went unsold.
The high point of the evening came early, when Lisa Dennison, a chairwoman of Sotheby’s, was bidding for a client on the telephone against Christopher Eykyn, a Manhattan dealer. Both wanted to buy Still’s “1949-A-No. 1,” a canvas of thick, jagged brush strokes in deep reds and blacks. For a while it seemed as if neither party would give up, but Ms. Dennison finally won out and the painting sold for $61.7 million, a record price for the artist at auction and well above its $25 million high estimate. The salesroom burst into applause.
(Final prices include the buyer’s commission to Sotheby’s: 25 percent of the first $50,000; 20 percent of the next $50,000 to $1 million and 12 percent of the rest. Estimates do not reflect commissions.)
Still is not an auction-house staple, nor is he an artist who has come on the market often, but Sotheby’s was selling four of his works, all on behalf of the City and County of Denver, which was raising money for an endowment for the new Clyfford Still Museum opening there on Nov. 18.
Patricia Still, who died in 2005, had bequeathed the paintings to the city. When Sotheby’s won the consignment in August, it was asked to sell the four works to a museum as a group. Denver gave the auction house a deadline of Sept. 19 to do so, but when it was unsuccessful Denver and Sotheby’s decided to auction them individually on Wednesday night.
Another top price was paid for “1947-Y-No. 2,” a tamer Still canvas of black, yellow, red and blue that was expected to bring $15 million to $20 million. Another telephone bidder bought the painting, paying $31.4 million.
With a major Gerhard Richter retrospective having opened at the Tate Modern in London last month, the appetite for that German artist’s work seemed bottomless. Sotheby’s was selling a group of colorful abstract canvases by Mr. Richter, including “Abstraktes Bild,” a dreamy 1997 canvas of pinks and blues that was estimated at $9 million to $12 million. It made a record price for the artist at auction when a telephone bidder paid $20.8 million.
Another top seller by Mr. Richter was “Gudrun,” a brightly colored painting from 1987 dominated by red and yellow diagonals, which brought $18 million, more than twice its $7.5 million high estimate. In 2001 it sold for $783,106 at Sotheby’s in London.
“Painterly paintings” was how John Elderfield, the Museum of Modern Art’s chief curator emeritus of painting and sculpture, explained the appeal of the Richters and Stills. (He organized the blockbuster de Kooning retrospective now at MoMA.) “Maybe it is a de Kooning effect, with Richters and Stills flying off the walls.”
Francis Bacon’s “Three Studies for a Self-Portrait,” a 1967 triptych of the artist depicted against a green background, also made a strong price, selling to a telephone bidder for $19.6 million. It had been expected to sell for $15 million to $20 million.
Sotheby’s did not have the quality of paintings by Warhol that Christie’s did on Tuesday night, and the results were mixed. One of the artist’s “Last Supper” paintings, this one from 1986, which had been estimated at $5.5 million to $7.5 million, brought $6.5 million to a telephone bidder.
As the audience was spilling out of the salesroom, reeling from the strong results, Lucy Mitchell-Innes, a former Sotheby’s expert who is now a Manhattan dealer, noted that on the electronic currency board there, rubles were missing, perhaps a sign that Russian buyers were going to be less in evidence this season.
“People still really enjoy the auction process,” she said. “It’s enthralling, they get a thrill and they get to take something home besides.”
