The Gold Watcher: gaming

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

WOW Gold Farmer Gets Robbed Of Bullion

It's unfortunate that her name and game got noticed in the media due to her being robbed, but Kristina Fincham has an unusual career. She's a World of Warcraft gold farmer, who plays the game to accumulate gold and sell it for real money to hungry players. There are lots of gold farmers about, but she's one who took the proceeds and invested them in real gold. Sadly, her hoard has been stolen.

An Australian woman is suing her insurer over the theft of 74 bars of real gold bullion worth $74,549, which she bought using profits made from gold farming in World of Warcraft.

Adelaide Now reports that Kristina Fincham was a (clearly successful) gold farmer in WoW who sold in-game gold to players in return for substantial profits. For reasons unknown, she then decided to convert the profits from the WoW gold into real-world gold bullion.

Reason unknown? Gold to gold has a neatness to it, and the reason can be easily discerned by looking at a ten-year gold chart.

Rationale

This blog is a continuation of its predecessor, The Gold Bubble. It is not associated with "The Goldwatcher" Website. If you're looking for "The Goldwatcher: Demystifying Gold Investing" or the work of John Katz, you can find it here.

Originally, The Gold Bubble was a perch for me to watch what I pegged as a nascent gold bubble - or, to be less controversial, the third stage of a long-term gold bull market.

As time went on, I drifted towards commentary on gold and the greenback, plus the interrelation between the two. The rest of the posts featured items about gold that I thought were interesting. I ended up diverging from the theme that the title promised.

So, I've reactivated the old blog under a different name. "The Gold Watcher" is a more accurate title for the blog that The Gold Bubble became.

The Enter Stage Right article that kicked off the predecessor blog contains a fuller explanation of my reasoning about a gold bubble: it's here. A sequel is here.

I'm also writing goldbug fiction. An annotated table of contents is available so you can choose any you'd like to read.

Disclaimer

Although I try to compensate, I do have opinions that are almost certainly influenced by what I've done with my own money. For the record, I am long gold-exploration stocks. On the odd chance I mention one that I own, I'll disclose it fully. I don't own any physical gold, nor do I own any producers or any well-known explorers.

Also, I must emphasize that I am not a registered investment advisor, and that I am not licensed to dispense investment advice in my jurisdiction of residence (Ontario, Canada). Consequently, this is not an investment-advice blog. It shouldn't be taken as such. I cannot provide any actionable material in the standard sense of the term; if you're intrigued by anything here, you'll have to see to your own trigger.

In addition to the standard boilerplate caution for you to do your own due diligence should you invest or speculate, I'd like to add a special caution: gold, by far, is the asset class that elicits the most emotions. A solid consensus of experieced investment professionals considers emotionality to be a performance-hobbler. In addition to doing your own research, and/or using a licensed professional to do so, I suggest that you watch yourself.