John Palmer sold a 10K gold medal he won for teaching excellence 21 years ago:
In 1988, I received a gold medal for teaching excellence from the The University of Western Ontario. I also received a certificate, signed with a rubber-stamp signature from the then provost.
...According to my scales at home, the medal weighed about 2 ounces. Ignoring transaction costs, if it had been pure gold (it wasn't, it was only 10K gold),
...But I live in a small town. Transaction costs mount as people travel from place-to-place to buy up old gold and as others bear the costs of re-smelting the gold products.
How much do you think I received for the medal?
He'll give us the answer plus to that question an explanation for "why now" in a future post. I'll give an answer to each question to the world in this post.
How much. 24K gold is pure gold. 10K gold is 42% gold, so I'll say he got $800 Canuck for it.
Why now: Obviously the opportunity cost of holding the medal is too high for John at the moment. That answers the why, but not the time component of "now." I'll say that he believes that there is a bubble in the price of gold with respect to the loonie.
Update: This article in the WSJ tells us that some investors think there's a bubble.