My brother and I had a very in-depth discussion last week about tangible assets versus money in the bank.
I'm into firearms. He's into musical instruments.
We started comparing the value of our collections, versus the value of American dollars over time.
Both of us started "collecting" about 30 years ago.
In almost every case, a Certificate of Deposit (CD) that made 5% APR would have been worth more now than almost any item in our collection of firearms or instruments. (Of course, dollars could be worthless almost overnight, given the circumstances.)
I didn't do in-depth financial research, but I didn't have a gun that made this mark (& he didn't have an instrument):
$1,000 x 5% interest x 30 years = $4,321.04
Gold (and some luckily picked real estate, with stupid expensive insurance and property taxes) were about the only thing we could come up with that would have made us more without being actively involved, than just money in the bank collecting interest...
Gold - 1995 vs 2025 - $390/oz then - $3,400/oz now - 7.5% APY
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