Tuesday, October 13, 1998

My Second Best Investment
by Tom Kuffel (MontanaFool at [email protected])

Unlike my best investment, my second best investment was not a result of my second worst investment. It was my second worst investment.

Back in the early '80s, my then pre-teen son got caught up, along with half the world, in gold fever. The price of gold seemed to rise a percentage point a day with no end in sight. Like the famous pony story, all he wanted for Christmas was a gold coin. Nothing else.

Mom, of course, wanted only the best for her baby. I pleaded and predicted correctly what was going to happen to the price of gold. All to no avail. So on Christmas morning our son received a full one ounce coin at a cost of well over $750. While he was suitably impressed with our devotion to his desires, I was breathtakingly impressed with how accurately I had determined the high water point of the gold market and how quickly the price of a commodity can fall.

The coin still sits in our safe deposit box now worth less than an inflation diminished $300. Whenever our son starts to get caught up in another speculation fever, we don't even have to remind him. He will do it for us. "Sounds like another gold coin, Dad," he will say.

No matter how many times you read about the tulip bulb or other speculative boom and bust bubble, it just isn't the same as having your own financial stake burned to ashes before your very eyes. That kind of hard earned experience is worth a thousand times the price I paid for the stupid coin.

[Hey Fools, why not pen a Fribble, yourself? We welcome submissions from readers. Just click here and read the "What's a Fribble?" item, pen a short masterpiece, and send it off to TMF [email protected].]

Have a similar tale?
Talk about it in the Fribble Message Folder!