As I've referenced recently, I've been sitting on and trying to accumulate some cash in my hobby budget to maybe buy a 1924 $20 double eagle in MS65 - my grandmother's birth year and now a newly 100-year-old coin. My grandmother would have been 100 years old in February if she were still alive.

I finally got some things moved around and have saved enough that I now have almost $2600 in my hobby budget, and the coin, back in January, was going for about $2,500-2,600.

But gold has moved up about $295/oz in the last 3 months and the coins are now going for about $2,900-3,000 now.

I'll soon have about $2,800 available. If I wanted to pull the trigger on it and get the coin while not quite having enough to buy in in my hobby budget I think Shandy wouldn't give me a hard time about it.

But I think I'm still just going to watch and wait a bit for now.

I may regret it later if the price of gold keeps heading up in the near term, but I don't know that it's going to stay at these levels.

The same people that have been predicting $3,000-5,000/oz for years are again going insane and screaming "buy now!" but, they've been saying this for quite a long time.

Gold hit about $2,050 in 2020 and hit about that same level in 2022. $2,050 in 2020 is about $2,475 now. So it would seem that this may only be an adjustment for 4 years of inflation. And that is the inflation adjusted 2020 peak. We might (and probably will) see it peak and drop back again, just like it always tends to. Until this recent spike, it's been basically flat for 4 years.

I looked up the all-in sustaining costs for some of the major gold miners and, they've gone up some, but they're still in the range of about $1,300-1,400 for most of the big ones, which is only up modestly from the $1,200-$1,300 it was a few years ago.

This spike up might have some legs yet, and it does bother me to watch something I want getting more expensive, but I'm going to calm myself and wait a bit yet.

The higher prices will inevitably bring more marginal production online with a lag, high prices always bring sellers onto the market, and spikes in demand spike premiums, which sour people on buying for a while. All of which will help reverse the trend.

Because of some bonuses and other things going on I'll probably get to add another $1100 to my hobby budget in the next 4-6 months, in addition to the $200 a month I normally get for my discretionary spending. And that also means that, barring a continued huge spike up, I might be able to get the double eagle and maybe one other thing - maybe a coin from Sweden to add to my old, world gold set.

On the other hand, maybe it's time to go for something from Mexico now that I have Venezuelan gold. Or maybe it's time to try to get some of those Zimbabwean bullion coins.

I guess we'll see how it all goes.