Scott Payton

Should you ever buy any investment — a share, a commodity, an acre of land — when its price stands at an all-time high, having risen by half in less than a year? Or does that make you the ‘greater fool’, the greedy investor who buys into the top of the rally? In recent days, the price of the world’s oldest and most universally recognised store of value, gold, has surged to all-time highs above $1,050 an ounce. Have those of us who didn’t buy months ago just missed the bus, or is there further to go? The gold price has been through three distinct phases during the past couple of years, says Philip Klapwijk, chairman of GFMS, a London-based precious metals research house.

‘One of my American clients recently lamented: “If only I’d put as much money into military medals over the last year as I’d put into the stock market,”’ says Peter Dangerfield, owner of online medals dealership www.medal-medaille.com. The markets for military medals and ephemera are strong, with new buyers venturing into the militaria world in search of shelter from the global financial storm. The top end of the medals market is particularly buoyant, says Mark Quayle, head of the medals department at Spink, which has been buying and selling military medals since they first appeared after the Napoleonic wars.

‘Whenever there’s a catastrophe on Wall Street, our business just gets better — because our products become more collectable.’ So says Bob Kerstein, founder of Virginia-based Scripophily.com, the world’s largest buyer and seller of historic bonds and share certificates. The recent blizzard of insurance and investment banking failures has brought Kerstein particularly brisk business. ‘Our Merrill Lynch certificates are selling very well, and we’re almost completely out of Bear Sterns certificates,’ he says. ‘A few months ago you could buy a Merrill Lynch certificate for about $20 or $30. Now they’re worth upwards of $100.