The interesting about any of these goods in a post-collapse society is that as they’re used up they’ll become rarer if not still under production, making their value rise and necessitating the need for lower and lower values of currency.
In that regard I do not think that it matters what you have and how much they can be traded for. What does matter is if you will be able to defend them from the mob that will pry it out of your hands for long enough to establish that you are willing to trade.
If you really think about it, if something REALLY goes wrong, few people with any semblance of preserving society will survive from our part of the world. Those people with bunkers in America come to mind and the monks of mount Athos … the rest of us, as a whole, do not really have any long term survival skills.
This leads into an interesting concept in which mining landfill sites from the pre-collapse past would become a profitable exercise. That was an idea used by Iain M. Banks in his novel Against a Dark Background.
That is actually the concept of a very cynical comic here that was called “Μετά την καταστροφή” (after the destruction) where only two people survive, one an educated cultured erudite and the other a simple everyday person.
The panels read:
1)
Erudite: We cannot sit around and do nothing! We need to look for more survivors.
Everyday person: There are no other survivors
2)
Erudite: There might be some. We need to find them! rebuild society…
Everyday person: Rebuild society??? Are you MAD?..
3)
Everyday person: … so that the world can once again fill with cops and social servants? To live in a world filled with “educated” snobs like you? So, I can once again be the idiot of the whole story?
4)
Everyday person: … No sir! Enough with your societies! I am for the first time in my life, free, and I shall remain so.
Erudite: You are an uncultured person with an inferiority complex, that’s what you are…
5)
Erudite: … but know this! You cannot stop civilizations! Human kind will continue its way forward!
6)
Everyday person: Speak for yourself because, as it is, half of human kind does not intende to move an inch towards anywhere
