Experience with buying gold?

I just read Pierre's very interesting article on the mechanics of the finance markets (2015, the BRICS checkmate Western finance? -- Sott.net). I highly recommend it as an overview presented in an easily understandable format.

Towards the ends he writes the following:



This got me thinking that now might be a good idea to buy some gold as an intermediary asset but I have no knowledge or experience with trading physical gold. I did a quick search on the forum and found this thread about buying gold in a credit card shaped form where you can break off 1 gram pieces which make it quite practical (Gold now available in wallet-sized “cards”).

I was thinking that other people on the forum might have similar thoughts and if so this thread could be a repository of do's and don'ts.

It may be that things look different in the EU and in the US or other places.

Things to consider that come to mind (by no means an exhaustive list)

Price issues
Price per gram or ounce
Shipping/delivery costs
Import tax/VAT

Liquidity issues
If you want to sell the gold, how do you prove its worth - how is it certified
Do you sell it per gram or as a coin

Vendor issues
]Reputation and history of vendor
Who owns the company

Safety issues
Where and how to store gold

Feel free to add to the list.


JM Bullion is where I buy mine. Best prices for sure. Always go for the deals. You want the lowest over spot price you can get.
 
Fwiw - below (no individual link to his post is available) is one take on gold and silver from a well followed person in the Alt finance and precious metals world. Gold now is making new all-time highs in the US and has been in many countries for some time. Silver has continued to be suppressed overall, yet could really start to run given physical demand worldwide and some technical details in terms of charting, as mentioned below. Many non-Western countries have been buying gold and silver in large quantities for some time. For silver, where demand has increased for a number of reasons to include solar panels, that has created for a number of years a large annual deficit in terms of what is mined. And setting of price in terms of what market is driving where the price for precious metals goes is the exchange in Shanghai, which is a pretty recent change. The Gold to Silver ration is still at around 85/90 to 1. It comes out of the ground at some like between 7 to 1 or 15 to 1 depending on who you listen to, as this illustration indicates.

silver ratio 1.png

Recently, I've also listened to interviews with another person that runs a precious metals dealership where he has said that retail interest (every day people) is pretty low. If something spooks the masses and they start to be interested in and run to buy precious metals, then most dealers, at least in the US, can be cleaned out pretty quickly, such examples are the start of Covid and the most recent bank failures, Silicon Valley Bank and others. Dealers were cleaned out pretty quickly.

February 3, 2025

Bill’s Commentary:

“Trust breaks right before your eyes!

Gold has been a tractor in first gear since January 1st. Many claim that the recently announced tariffs are the reason. I do not believe this, rather, I believe the Feb, COMEX deliveries are way outsized and require this gold from London to avoid default. In silver, the same situation is stacking up for March deliveries. Here is an in depth take of the “plumbing” behind the scenes;

Read more here…

Additionally, it looks like the Treasury department has been blindly cutting checks. Often times fraudulently and to fund some pretty evil operations. This revelation will have a chilling effect on the “trust” in the US both internally and internationally.

Read more here…

Another area where Americans and also foreigners will have concern is the pushback being brought on to Tulsi Gabbard. “Globalists” are shitting their pants after her testimony where she has basically said our intelligence community has gone off the rails. Her stance is noble and truthful in my opinion, I believe the vast majority agree with this. “Trust” is on the line here, and thus so is CONFIDENCE or the lack of!

Read more here…

January alone has seen at least a decade’s worth of change and action. I believe the next month may very well top January. Gold has already broken out to all time highs versus ALL currencies. Another way to say this is; ALL currencies have collapsed to all time lows versus gold, and thus all time lows in purchasing power. I believe the extremely long wait in silver will finally come to a head in this episode. We will find out shortly whether the silver even exists to make delivery. Below is a 5 year weekly chart of silver.

image-1-1.png

It is an easy view to see this 5 year period as an inverted head and shoulder pattern that completes once silver is over $35. The next target will obviously be $50. Going back to 1980, silver blew out to make a $50 top, the same occurred in 2011 to form a 30 year “cup”. Breaking over $50 now will finalize THE longest cup and handle formation of anything that I know of throughout history.

People ask me all the time as to what type of extreme numbers for gold and silver they should expect? I can only answer that this cannot be estimated in any mathematical way other than pointing out that the opposite of zero, is infinity. Yes, I understand that the word “infinity” sounds like carnival barking. But can the same be said for the word “zero”?

Just understand that every Ponzi scheme ever performed throughout history has ALWAYS ended at this number we call zero. Finance in today’s world is a fractional reserve Ponzi scheme that has run on one thing alone …CONFIDENCE! Confidence has been chipped away at for years as people see bullshit all around them with their own eyes. They see it financially, they see it socially, and also politically. Governments became so brazen as to try to shame people by telling them “who are you gonna believe, us, or your lying eyes”? A failure to deliver will answer any and all questions!”

Standing watch,

Bill Holter

www.BillHolter.com

I also watched this interview today and found it worth my time. I've followed Dan Kranzler for a long time off and on.

 
Silver is cheap, but may be not for much longer, and for me personally, I’d rather a bag of silver coins than a sim card sized slice of gold for the same price. I’m not even convinced that either will be worth much to individuals for that long after an economic crash, may be for a year or so until people realise we can’t eat it.

There are a few places I know of here in Oz that take silver as currency right now, but not gold.
 
I’m not even convinced that either will be worth much to individuals for that long after an economic crash, may be for a year or so until people realise we can’t eat it.
What if there is no economic crash, but just a slow economic decline in some countries?

Though even without a crash, delivery routes can be disrupted in one way or another and there may indeed be food shortages in some places. In this respect it is good to look at whether the country where you live could support itself on its own with food and energy. There are a lot of countries that would not be able to.
 
What if there is no economic crash, but just a slow economic decline in some countries?

Though even without a crash, delivery routes can be disrupted in one way or another and there may indeed be food shortages in some places. In this respect it is good to look at whether the country where you live could support itself on its own with food and energy. There are a lot of countries that would not be able to.
Valid point, and it’s likely dependent more so on how big city, and small area countries with large populations would cope.
My point was that having some back up silver (or gold but I’ve got a tickle about silver) in the interim IF there is a crash is a really good idea while people find another way to get their necessities.

I’ve got a heap of seeds to grow but my partner built a big shed for his motorbikes (:umm:) right where my veggie patch was.
I suppose he eats last for that!
 
My point was that having some back up silver (or gold but I’ve got a tickle about silver) in the interim IF there is a crash is a really good idea while people find another way to get their necessities.
I think that if there is a crash it is best not to let anyone know that you have precious metals. Bartering with items that are needed is a better idea - that is also what people report who went through local "crashes", such as during the Yugoslavian war.

The way I see it, precious metals are best for preserving your extra savings for the time after the chaos or shortages end (if they do).
 
Right now in the US there is not much interest from people, the retail buyers, to buy precious metals, especially silver. Many people are actually selling silver (and gold) to meet obligations, such as taxes, etc. This video is just a snapshot into the current sentiment and what is happening in the marketplace and for precious metals dealers. If you are looking to buy silver in the US, it is a good time in terms of the lower premiums over spot price you should be paying.


On the other end of the spectrum where countries and large entities are buying silver and gold it is a totally different story. It looks like there is not enough metal to satisfy demand to the point where it is commented below that the lease rates for silver are moving into the short squeeze range, which if there continues to be more demand for physical silver than supply, it could resolve into significantly higher prices in silver as we move forward.

Metal Lease Rates Blowing-Out In London & NY - Physical Demand Is Lifting The Veil On Extreme London Gold & Silver Leverage​

Demand For Metal Delivery Is Terminal To Leveraged Market Price Setting Fraud​

David Jensen
Feb 05, 2025

The UK’s BullionVault, partially owned by RIT Capital Partners which is an investment arm of the Rothschild family, reports the following rates to lease physical gold and silver in London on Monday February 3, 2025:

Gold : 4.5% for a 1 month lease

Silver: 6.5% for a 1 month lease
In the article, Bruce Ikemizu of the Japanese Bullion Market Association says of the silver lease rate "6.5% for silver is almost at a level that could be called a squeeze".
Ikemizu further comments regarding the London market "Metal for immediate delivery has been so in demand that short-dated forward rates have moved into a rare backwardation, pushing lease rates higher."
In addition, on January 24, 2025 CEO of Scottsdale Mint Josh Phair reported NY lease rates of 10% for gold. I am trying to get in touch with Josh Phair to confirm and will let you know if I hear back from him.

Implied Lease Rates constructed from digital futures prices for gold and silver have not yet responded and are providing a lower indication however, they are expected to catch up with time. We’ll see.

Silver And Gold Will Increasingly Be Squeezed As Relentless Physical Demand Ends Leveraged Promissory Note Pricing​

With an estimated 400M oz. of gold cash/spot contracts and 5B oz. of silver cash/spot contracts standing in the London market and with the ‘free float’ (actual metal bars available to market) standing at a tiny fraction of this level, if the current run for delivery of physical metal continues it will be terminal for the decades-long price setting fraud operated by the Bank of England in The City of London’s market - the world’s largest gold and silver trading cash market.

The fact that Reuters and the Financial Times are claiming that we are seeing market dysfunction merely because of a slow-down in the lease market logistics is interesting. London traders scrambling to lease sufficient metal to meet demands for metal delivery against largely unbacked cash/spot gold and silver notes is telling - the surging lease rates tells us that not only are logistics slowed-down but there is insufficient metal available to be leased - they don’t have the available metal.

Best regards,

David Jensen
 
Something to think about is the value of what you're buying and eventually going to sell. For example in the UK the maximum value of an item the Royal Mail will accept for delivery is £2500, so if your gold bars/coins are worth more, there's a small gamble. I had to sell gold a few years ago and found trying to sell it a nightmare, there were local gold dealers but their prices sucked, but I found a dealer in Blackpool that arranged full price insured delivery and paid a good price but it put me off buying larger sized gold pieces.
 
Silver is cheap, but may be not for much longer, and for me personally, I’d rather a bag of silver coins than a sim card sized slice of gold for the same price. I’m not even convinced that either will be worth much to individuals for that long after an economic crash, may be for a year or so until people realise we can’t eat it.
Laura once posted a video of a few street food sellers in Zimbabwe/Zaire (now Congo)? who would only accept gold after their economy crashed, but I don't know how long that situation lasted. But I can imagine that some silver or gold could always be useful.
 
Something to think about is the value of what you're buying and eventually going to sell. For example in the UK the maximum value of an item the Royal Mail will accept for delivery is £2500, so if your gold bars/coins are worth more, there's a small gamble. I had to sell gold a few years ago and found trying to sell it a nightmare, there were local gold dealers but their prices sucked, but I found a dealer in Blackpool that arranged full price insured delivery and paid a good price but it put me off buying larger sized gold pieces.

For the shorter term you can open a goldmoney acct. or similar (Bullionvault in the UK for e.g.) and not receive physical silver but instead invest in it.
 
The way I see it, precious metals are best for preserving your extra savings for the time after the chaos or shortages end (if they do).

Since I'm unable to store stuff for barter in my apartment I am stacking 5 deutschmarks "Silberadler" which are 625 on sterling, and could be worth 10 euros in times of crisis. They could come in handy if only people below the age of 35 would recognize them.
An ounce of fine silver (currently at € 30) may already prove to be too expensive to trade in for something then.
 
Aside from the sense of security you might feel having your extra money in physical shiny form, there is also a knowing that some percentage of your money is not in a bank, being lent out tenfold for lord knows what.

i like to keep as little money on the digital bank screen as possible, for a few reasons 😎
 
For the shorter term you can open a goldmoney acct. or similar (Bullionvault in the UK for e.g.) and not receive physical silver but instead invest in it.

One thing you have to be careful about is that you only buy and store ALLOCATED gold - that is gold that you store as physical bars/ coin/ bullion which have a serial number and are stored in your name (that you can visit in the vault and check out if you so desire). UNALLOCATED gold is more or less paper gold - they are leveraged times x like paper gold. So as @hlat said earlier on, all you own is an IOU.

The drawback of this is that storage costs are higher, but over the last two or three years the total yield of gold in storage was around 7% per annum (that’s appreciation minus storage costs), and that is a pretty good yield - you would be hard pressed to get that with any other investment vehicle regularly.

The squeeze in gold deliveries currently going on at the London bullion market is a result of this leverage - there is more ‘allocations’ of gold bars than bars available for physical delivery. In the past this worked a treat, and was one of the reasons the gold price was depressed, because conversion to physical was not that popular. This has changed over the last few weeks/months. The LBMA may report their precious metals holdings as x thousands of tons of gold/ silver etc, but what part of that is actually liquid/ available for sale? That is only a tiny part, the rest is allocated (probably mostly by physical metals ETFs, central banks and some private holders), and these folks are not going to sell now, so what we are seeing in the LBMA now is that they have been caught by their own leveraging trap - there is a higher call for conversion to physical than physical available.

In the past they were able to avert a run on precious metals by dumping paper gold on the market, which drove the price down, thus driving investors to loose interest. They have been playing that game for a very long time, so there is a chance they might be able to curb the outflow yet again. We’ll see, I guess.

`Silver has been lagging a lot relative to gold. Silver is the poor cousin of gold, it’s part investment metal, and part industrial product (it’s the best conductor and used in electronics, solar panels and may of the ‘green tech’, currently there is no replacement for it). The issue with silver is the fact that industrial demand in the last three years has consistently outstripped production by quite some margin. Silver holdings have progressively drawn down, and at some stage, bar some wild card, this will light a fuse under the silver price.

Historically, silver has almost always outperformed the gains in a precious metals bull market, but also comes down faster and harder. It is also a much smaller market so that all the big players are not really taking part in it, as they operate with amounts of money which would destabilize the price too much, hence why they (mostly) play the gold market.
 
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