Liberty Dollar Defies U.S. Mint Warning
May 10th, 2007You’re allowed to have these coins, just don’t use them to buy anything from someone who’s willing to accept them as payment. That’s illegal.
Via: PR Newswire / Yahoo:
Liberty Dollar announced today that it has issued a new $1 Copper Liberty that defies the U.S. Mint’s previous warning that only the use, not possession, of the new currency was illegal.
The new one dollar Copper Liberty is the latest effort to defend the consumer’s right to use gold, silver or anything of choice in commerce. The new one dollar Copper is silver dollar size and contains one ounce of pure copper. Each Copper Liberty will feature the same Liberty Head and Torch designs as on its popular $20 Silver Liberty.
Liberty Dollar reports that over 10,000 Copper Libertys were ordered in the first 24 hours. The U.S. Mint’s warning that only using, not possession, was illegal has drawn an increasing number of people to the Liberty Dollar and its underdog’s stance for individual liberty and real money.
Bernard von NotHaus, the free market advocate behind the Liberty Dollar, explains that his overnight success with the Liberty Dollar is as easy to understand as the Copper Liberty itself. “Hey, it is one ounce of pure copper for a buck. It is simple. It represents real value. It isn’t anything like the U.S. dollar.”
Von NotHaus said the popularity of the new Copper Liberty Dollar speaks for itself. “The Liberty Dollar is larger, heavier, more metal content and larger bullion value than the U.S. Mint dollar. The only thing lacking is government approval.” Of course that is one thing von NotHaus abhors. He thinks money should be the domain of the people who use it and its value derived in the marketplace, not by the Federal Reserve.
Von NotHaus dismisses physical comparisons to the U.S. Mint’s new Presidential Dollar. “How could there be any similarity?” von NotHaus asks, “Just compare the size, weight, color, material, face value, and metal value of each. The Copper Liberty is 100% pure metal. Not an alloy from the U.S. Mint!”
Von NotHaus says, “The new $1 Copper Liberty says a lot about our country and its money … and how they have changed. People have the right to collect any kind of medallion and use anything they mutually choose as barter.”
Research Credit: Eileen
I had looked into the liberty dollar stuff back when i was deciding what to invest in. Despite this ruling, they are a rip off. At the time, silver was less than $5 an ounce and they wanted $10, but when silver got close to $10 they inflated the coin by making it a$20 piece. Mean while other coins, minted by real gov’ts, could be had for about $1-2 over spot. To charge $1 for an ounce of copper when a pound of copper is $3?!? Minting costs aside, that’s a nice profit for someone.
Now, I do agree that it’s messed up that we the people can’t decide how debts are settled, but the liberty dollar is just a dream that can be had if everyone just bought other coins and agreed to use those, heck you can get silver rounds for a 0.50 over spot. Silver eagles for 1.25+spot.
My conclusion, way back when, was that Liberty was a) pipe dream b) scam c) both.
I also remember when they first started up. “Junk” silver seemed like a much better option to me, which I actually had quite a bit of. (That’s pre 1962 U.S. silver dollars/quarters/dimes, in case you don’t know. HINT: Tons of it move on ebay.) If you believe that this metal-for-commerce-paradigm will rise from the ashes again, which I actually don’t, there’s much more “junk” silver out there than the “Liberty” coins.
Personally, I’d just buy copper in bulk before I’d buy those Liberty coins. Saw off a couple of ounces worth of copper plumbing pipe and pay for your loaf of bread with that! HA Save the minting costs. I know! Cryptogon Dollars! One ounce lengths of copper plumbing pipe that say “cryptogon.com”. Why not…
The problem, of course, is liquidity.
People, in general, are far too ignorant about this and, therefore, if it comes to having to use an alternative to USD, not enough people will have the coins to make a market in anything.
It’ll be far more varied: metal coins of all varieties, bottles of booze, chickens, gun parts, containers of motor oil, corrugated iron panels, buckets of milk, boxes of nails, lengths of rope, knives, axes, shovels etc.
I linked to the piece mostly because of the absurdity of the U.S. Government’s position. The fact that “Liberty Dollars” would even appear on the USG’s radar is the most interesting aspect of this.
To quote from NotHaus, PEOPLE, and that would be YOU and ME, have the RIGHT to collect ANY kind of medallion and use ANYTHING WE MUTUALLY choose as barter.
As Alek wrote on another post, BACK ROOM GOLD exchange is FINE. But its soon to be, or it SEEMS that anything but the use of the dollar is NOW becoming illegal in ours. PHHHHT.
I’ll give you 2 cabbages for the 2 hours you take care of my Mom. For those that live in my world, those 2 cabbages are worth MORE than the dollars per hour I pay them as a wage. It’s an organic cabbage, I put months of work into growing it. Kapeesh?
While I need the dollar in my world to pay for caregiving, buy food, pay bills etc. it is no longer a meaningful medium of exchange because there is no WORTH/VALUE to it. The US dollar is no longer an exchange of VALUE – which is what money – the coin of the whatever the realm, age, or epoch – was designed to be. The medium of exchange should make us feel good and that we both are in a win/win after we give WHATEVER we choose for a service and/or product. But no more.
It is hard for me to comprehend a world where the dollar no longer has any value as medium of exchange. But that’s where it is.
And on that note, I’ll be starting my cabbage seeds this weekend even though the weather feels like late July in early May.
its a really fine line they’re walking, and I gotta hand it to them for doing it well so far. To barter is completely legal. To portray something as a currency is illegal. What’s the difference? These folks aim to find out. It’s not illegal to use these, its illegal to use them “as currency”. Similarly, its legal to buy and use spray paint. But if you buy it and use it as a drug, you can be charged with a crime. Its not illegal to use, its illegal to use *in certain manners*. That is a legal distinction that many fail to grasp.
Of course, all laws be damned if you step on the wrong toes, you’ll find out where the line is. I suspect they’ll be shut down post haste, but that’s me.
west
/stickin with goods, services, for barter (mead, anyone?
/silver both physical and offshore
P.S.
I’ll be talking to my Aunt Maddie this weekend. My grandparents made quite a good living, among other things (they helped a lot of people survive – gave them food, free rent, home grown medical care etc.), off of making booze during the Depression. Grandpa I guess went to jail a lot for doing it though. Seems that there always has to be a fall guy. But they had a medium of exchange.
@Eileen
>>>making booze… medium of exchange…
Can anyone top that? That sounds pretty damn good, if you ask me. It assumes availability of fermentable/distillable stock materials. Of course, there’s a long history of people fermenting and distilling just about any damn thing.
And, two organic cabbages for two hours work? I’d consider that, having grown organic cabbages before.
Damn right.
Stuffed cabbages (holupki) (cabbage leaves rolled with rice and meat)are sold by our church for about er, $8 U.S. farthingless per order of 5. Oh please, I must stop now. The accountant in me is starting to wonder whether the church has factored into their price the cost of the beef.
Dunno where the farthingless word came from. Had to find my dictionary – “something of very small value; Withdrawn as a bronze coin of Great Britain in 1961.”
Here we go dollar, here we go.
I’m always amazed at so called libertarians who say the liberty dollar is a scam.
By definition, if you think the liberty dollar is a scam because it has $20 face value and $16 worth of silver in it ($14 spot in 1,000 ounce bars plus $2 minting costs) then you are an idiot.
You want your car for the cost of the raw materials in 1,000 tonne orders?
Further, people who say the liberty dollar is a scam never bother to note that the US Dollar is even more of a scam by the same measure– %99 of it is profit, sometimes %99.9999 of it is profit.
So, would you rather lose %99 of your money (and even more with inflation) or would you rather lose %20 of the value of your money? (And that’s assuming you can’t exchange the Liberty dollar at face value– and the reality is– the liberty dollar trades at face value.
Alcohol is an excellent store of value — in certain forms it even gains with age, rather than degrading as fresh food does.
as far as food goes, root veggies and the like that store in winter gain lots of value when they are provided “out of season” – so a root cellar is a good investment.
Good distillers can be had from ebay – solid copper — and they wont be available for long (solid copper?!). Potatoes (a tuber), wheat, rye (grains pollinated by wind) – make excellent alchohol. They can be spruced with whatever spices, herbs, fruits become available.
Alchohol is *critical* for making tinctures of most herbal medicines, because of the solubility of herbal oils. So if you want Sage oil or Tea Tree oil as an antibiotic, alchohol is a good vehicle for the process.
Me personally: mead is fun and easy, I have lots of honey from my bees – more than I can use, certainly. And I like it. I’ve considered distilling it into honey brandy. Metheglin, a type of mead with herbs, has been used as medicine (hence the name) for over a thousand years. Once properly bottled, it just gets better with time.
Joe,
The assumption that all of us are libertarians and that we don’t know how to take care of our assets makes an ass out of u and mption. Also sounds to me that you are one of the suckers who bought in to the liberty dollar, well at least you ‘preserved’ some of your dollar value…
Yeah sure, the dollar is a scam too, but it’s facilitated by the gov’t and like Kevin said, it’s all about liquidity. If everyone accepts the scam, and not your precious libterties, me thinks you just got scammed twice.
Lastly, you also assume that some of this site’s readers are ignant and don’t invest their hard earned currency. Kevin has been describing investment vehicles to preserve wealth, from metals to the kitchen sink, literally. I personally like the pipe idea, you can beat people over the head with it too. But I digress. I myself have refrained from buying a tractor, it’s impossible to park in nyc, but have done well enough to stay ahead of the 8-11% YoY M3 inflation that is destroying the dollar and even grow my portfolio beyond that. Of course I always have an eye on preserving value, even it means losing it in the process. But if I can limit that, and maximize the preservation, I think that the liberties are a bad investment especially with cheaper alternatives.
One more thing I’d like to clarify: when I last looked at liberties, the spot was settled at $10 and they just started charging $20 for a coin. I ended up buying Silver eagles at $12.50. I think I did better no?
And since the US gov’t isn’t going away tomorrow, while the Liberty Dollar guys may get sent to gitmo… you can do the math. While the LD may seem like a better deal now that silver has raced up to $13 and change, you are still paying $20 for it, when a silver maple (oh canada), can be had for $15. Take your LDs to canada and all you got is a silver round which is has +.50 over spot value. Plus it’s just a matter of time before the LD people inflate the damned thing to $40 or $50.
I bought Liberties at a quantity discount for around $7.50, when they were labeled 10$. Oz price at the time was around $5. I’ve since exchanged my 10’s for 20’s but still have some 10’s around. I negotiate value with those, which usually double what I paid.
I can buy the same amount of gas now that I could buy then for the same amount of silver. Yes, there are things about the Norfed system I don’t like but no one can tell me they don’t work just as intended. Of course, I was willing to pay for the minting, delivery, advertising and some profit as well, other wise I could have bought rounds.