The Opposite

My mom called me a few days ago to ask for some investment advice. Apparently someone told her that she should move into precious metals to hedge against an inflationary currency. Specifically the advice was to go buy silver coins. Not to move around actual money in the markets or anything, just go spend hard earned dollars on silver coins. At this point in the conversation, I immediately knew who it was.
I have an uncle who is seemingly behind the curve on every single investment. In the days after both September 11 and Hurricane Katrina he was leading the hysteria with his cries of $4.00/gallon gas. Of course, he ended up being right...but not in the time frame that he clearly meant (i.e. within a month). I asked her if that was the case and she said it was. I said that first of all, that was bad advice because the dollar is actually increasing in value right now (up to where 1€ buys $1.35 as of 8 am) and commodities are all feeling that pressure - oil is down from $150/barrel to $90/barrel, gold is down from over $1000/oz to $870/oz and silver is down from a high of nearly $20/oz to $12/oz.
I suppose that if you want to lose money, you'd go into silver, and I told her that if she was going to insist on buying precious metals to go to gold and to buy it on the market rather than through a coin dealer. Nevertheless, I don't know if she's going to listen to me because for some reason, even though he's been wrong so often, she listens to my uncle. I really just should do the opposite of what he does and I'd be fine as long as he's still investing.