quikpic--thanks for the reply.

i did check out the toqueville fund prospectus and noted the potential for owning bullion -- interesting wrinkle. you are indeed a student of the subject!

my approach has been entusiastic but haphazard and has included finding small companies with options and then trading/selling covered calls. this worked for TASR -- or whenever i was able to time the market.

i had a priveliged youth. in the 1930's my parents rented a hilltop home overlooking long island sound on a farm_cum_estate belonging to a widowed greataunt. the town was great neck. alfred sloan and walter chrysler had been her neighbors. two chaufers lived on the property. my parents had no interst in wealth -- my father because he did not have to, my mother because she did not have any until late in life. after my great aunt's death in 1947 we moved to another family farm_cum_estate just north of the catskill mountain where i finished public highschool. the hilltop home in great neck -- and the hill --were leveled to make way for several hundred homes.

i went on to a quaker college, medical school in rochester, ny, and a career in the nascent specialty of medical genetics lol now, for over a decade i have been back on the farm where i raise garlic and gladiola. my wife continues molecular genetics research in charleston, sc, where our 5 children, 8 grandchildren and i are visitors for up to several months each winter.