Where and how do you purchase physical gold?

[Libertarian666]

You won't find anything useful in Manhattan.  There's a coin dealer in Paterson, NJ and I know someone who has bought gold bars there several times, but the neighborhood is a little funky and it's hard to get to by public transportation.

Online purchases work well.  If you don't have a front desk or a VERY trusted neighbor to take the package for you, the post office will hold it for you to pick up - it's registered so they can't just leave it in your vestibule.  Alternatively, consider getting a PO box for packages.

I'd think that "public transportation" would be the last mode of transportation I'd want if I had physical gold on me!

But I love the suggestion in the last paragraph. Prior to reading it I was wondering how safe it'd be to have physical gold to be sitting in my rural mailbox all day long and fully available to anyone walking or driving or bicycling by it.

VInny

That will never happen. Registered mail must be signed for by everyone who handles it. It cannot be left in a rural mailbox.

[vnatale]

You won't find anything useful in Manhattan.  There's a coin dealer in Paterson, NJ and I know someone who has bought gold bars there several times, but the neighborhood is a little funky and it's hard to get to by public transportation.

Online purchases work well.  If you don't have a front desk or a VERY trusted neighbor to take the package for you, the post office will hold it for you to pick up - it's registered so they can't just leave it in your vestibule.  Alternatively, consider getting a PO box for packages.

I'd think that "public transportation" would be the last mode of transportation I'd want if I had physical gold on me!

But I love the suggestion in the last paragraph. Prior to reading it I was wondering how safe it'd be to have physical gold to be sitting in my rural mailbox all day long and fully available to anyone walking or driving or bicycling by it.

VInny

One time when I ordered gold online, I came home from work to find a little box of gold coins sitting on the front doormat of my garden apartment!

Scary!!!

Vinny

[Libertarian666]

You won't find anything useful in Manhattan.  There's a coin dealer in Paterson, NJ and I know someone who has bought gold bars there several times, but the neighborhood is a little funky and it's hard to get to by public transportation.

Online purchases work well.  If you don't have a front desk or a VERY trusted neighbor to take the package for you, the post office will hold it for you to pick up - it's registered so they can't just leave it in your vestibule.  Alternatively, consider getting a PO box for packages.

I'd think that "public transportation" would be the last mode of transportation I'd want if I had physical gold on me!

But I love the suggestion in the last paragraph. Prior to reading it I was wondering how safe it'd be to have physical gold to be sitting in my rural mailbox all day long and fully available to anyone walking or driving or bicycling by it.

VInny

One time when I ordered gold online, I came home from work to find a little box of gold coins sitting on the front doormat of my garden apartment!

If that package was sent by registered mail, the postal employee should be fired and possibly prosecuted if he or she was reported.

[Libertarian666]

Taxes can also sop up dollars

I dont know how easy it is for the rich to leave the country if they get too high...

It's not that hard, although still quite annoying. The main issue is getting another citizenship and giving up your US one.

The question is: If the rich want to leave, where would they go? If tax rates go that high here, they will certainly be even more confiscatory in Europe, Australia, etc. I don't know about you guys, but I think I would have a tough time moving to Asia or South America, and it may not be much better there anyway.

I'd not even give a thought to leaving this country. I always say that though I'm 100% genetically Southern Italian, I'm 100% culturally American. All my passions are this country based. On top of that, I'm an extreme provincial.

Vinny

I would only leave if things get much worse here.
Such as if Bernie Sanders or some other lunatic got elected President.
Fortunately that doesn't look very probable at the moment.

[Kriegsspiel]

You won't find anything useful in Manhattan.  There's a coin dealer in Paterson, NJ and I know someone who has bought gold bars there several times, but the neighborhood is a little funky and it's hard to get to by public transportation.

Online purchases work well.  If you don't have a front desk or a VERY trusted neighbor to take the package for you, the post office will hold it for you to pick up - it's registered so they can't just leave it in your vestibule.  Alternatively, consider getting a PO box for packages.

I'd think that "public transportation" would be the last mode of transportation I'd want if I had physical gold on me!

But I love the suggestion in the last paragraph. Prior to reading it I was wondering how safe it'd be to have physical gold to be sitting in my rural mailbox all day long and fully available to anyone walking or driving or bicycling by it.

VInny

One time when I ordered gold online, I came home from work to find a little box of gold coins sitting on the front doormat of my garden apartment!

If that package was sent by registered mail, the postal employee should be fired and possibly prosecuted if he or she was reported.

Hmm. I wonder if it was delivered to the front office, who signed for it then walked over to my apartment and left it there.

[Libertarian666]

You won't find anything useful in Manhattan.  There's a coin dealer in Paterson, NJ and I know someone who has bought gold bars there several times, but the neighborhood is a little funky and it's hard to get to by public transportation.

Online purchases work well.  If you don't have a front desk or a VERY trusted neighbor to take the package for you, the post office will hold it for you to pick up - it's registered so they can't just leave it in your vestibule.  Alternatively, consider getting a PO box for packages.

I'd think that "public transportation" would be the last mode of transportation I'd want if I had physical gold on me!

But I love the suggestion in the last paragraph. Prior to reading it I was wondering how safe it'd be to have physical gold to be sitting in my rural mailbox all day long and fully available to anyone walking or driving or bicycling by it.

VInny

One time when I ordered gold online, I came home from work to find a little box of gold coins sitting on the front doormat of my garden apartment!

If that package was sent by registered mail, the postal employee should be fired and possibly prosecuted if he or she was reported.

Hmm. I wonder if it was delivered to the front office, who signed for it then walked over to my apartment and left it there.

Yes, that would be possible, assuming it wasn't marked "Deliver to addressee only", which is an additional service available on registered mail.

[blue_ruin17]

For physical (40% of my gold allocation) I order from silvergoldbull.ca. Free, fast shipping; usually the lowest premiums I can find. Online dealers are pretty much the only way to go, IMO -- brick and mortar dealers just can't compete.

For international storage (40% of my allocation) I use Goldmoney Personal. For Canadians, it is the best service for allocated gold storage in its class. I researched the fine print of their services intensively before investing with them, and was sold on their strong commitment to ensuring that every single gram of gold that a customer owns is absolutely, 100% fully allocated and accounted for. They even created and patented a ledger system specifically created for that purpose (Google: Aurum closed loop private ledger). They have public, detailed contingency plans for bankruptcy which are structured in such a way that keeps customer gold away from creditor or court pockets. Redemption for physical, delivered to your door, isn't a process that is buried in fine print, it is a main feature of the service. Overall, an excellent service, the best way to hold physical gold in an allocated account in an overseas vault, IMO.

HOWEVER... and here comes a huge caveat: Goldmoney Personal recently stopped accepting new accounts and has frozen the service to include only already existing customers. A new service, Goldmoney Holding, was launched...and it is terrible. So far, they have kept their promise to let Goldmoney Personal customers to continue using the platform, but inevitably, at some point they will surely for a migration to the Goldmoney Holding platform, and I will promptly take my business elsewhere, assuming the problems with Goldmoney Holding have not been eliminated by that point.

The last 20% of my gold allocation is held in my Tax Free Savings Account in the CGL.C.TO ETF (Canadian GLD, essentially), for tax-free balancing purposes.

Blueruin17!

I know you are also still active here.

Any updates on any of the above? I was completely impressed with your level of due diligence!

Vinny

I have 100% bailed on Goldmoney. Only in retrospect do I recognize that their breathtaking decline in value, customer service, and integrity was not incidental, but rather likely by design.

With Goldmoney "Personal", the sheer ease and swiftness in which fiat currency could be converted into gold or silver was remarkable; you could use fund your account with bank bill payments for free, or even with credit cards if you covered the service fee. Redemption for physical was exceedingly easy, streamlined, and affordable -- even at amounts as little as 1/10th ounce of gold, shipped to your address within a business day or two upon demand. They had a debit card that you could use to spend your precious metal holdings at any POS that accepted debit. You could choose what vault to hold your allocated gold.

Out of no where, Goldmoney "Personal" was frozen, and all new customers where directed to Goldmoney "Holding". All the amazing features and potential of "Personal" were nuked. Only one, cumbersome, expensive method of funding your account: wire transfer. The process for taking physical delivery became very opaque and prohibitively expensive. For example, if you request redemption for physical now you get the message:

The Holding does not have a sufficient balance available of gold to take delivery of a bar, or the Goldmoney bar delivery facility is currently unavailable. Please contact our Relationship Management team.

Oh really...Before I could demand delivery of as little as 1/10th of an ounce of gold on demand at 3am from my phone while drunk in the back of a taxi....but now I have to contact the "Relationship Management team" to "discuss" my desire to take delivery.

Ya, no thank you.

I now believe that Goldmoney has been essentially comprised. I suspect (though I cannot prove) that their service provided such an effective, frictionless "on-ramp" to DELIVERABLE gold and silver that the service was probably flagged as being a significant threat to the current monetary paradigm. For example, I personally have multiple credit cards with $20,000+ limits. During the onset of a financial crisis in which the integrity and trust of the financial system itself were called into question, I could have had the ability to convert my credit card limits (i.e. "nothing") into dozens of ounces of deliverable physical gold, or thousands of ounces of deliverable physical silver... There is no way that ability could be allowed to persist going into the next financial crisis.

I don't know "who" compromised Goldmoney. I suspect that they were slapped with onerous government regulations in advance of the next financial crisis in order to ensure that average folks have no ability to "on ramp" their fiat dollars and credit card limits into physical precious metals.

All my gold is physical, now. No international holdings. No games. No risks.

When you have a good hand, keep it close to your chest.

[dualstow]

^ Very interesting post from blue ruin above.

So far, I haven’t had gold left on my doorstep, but I have had other items that were supposed to be signature required left there. My usual mail lady was laid up in the hospital, and her replacement did not care. It was just a fountain pen, but it made me think about future gold deliveries.

Too bad Amazon’s not in the business. There’s a pick-up site just minutes away.

[bedraggled]

Just a thought:

Would it be reasonable for members of this forum to consider buying and selling gold coins with fellow Gyro-HB members? No long distance traveling, quirky neighborhoods and, on a positive note, more personal interactions- everyone is a friend.. Premiums, fees and other annoyances might be mitigated.

Just a thought.

[dualstow]

Don't want to go off topic, but the likelihood of Sanders, Warren, or someone just like them getting elected in 2024 is much higher than I care to contemplate.

Strongly agree.

[Libertarian666]

I would only leave if things get much worse here.
Such as if Bernie Sanders or some other lunatic got elected President.
Fortunately that doesn't look very probable at the moment.

Don't want to go off topic, but the likelihood of Sanders, Warren, or someone just like them getting elected in 2024 is much higher than I care to contemplate. Vinny or someone just like him can resurrect this comment in 2025 and I will seem very prescient.

Nah, Don Jr. will easily beat any of those losers.

[Libertarian666]

Don't want to go off topic, but the likelihood of Sanders, Warren, or someone just like them getting elected in 2024 is much higher than I care to contemplate.

Strongly agree.

Rather than using an "unsorted list" you could use a hash table like the one described on my website www.threemisses.com.

Then you don't need a quantum computer, just a regular computer, to get O(1) access times with an upper bound of three random memory accesses.

(BTW, I'm looking for beta testers if anyone is interested. No NDA or other paperwork needed, just download the library and play with it or use it in your own project.)

[Libertarian666]

I would only leave if things get much worse here.
Such as if Bernie Sanders or some other lunatic got elected President.
Fortunately that doesn't look very probable at the moment.

Don't want to go off topic, but the likelihood of Sanders, Warren, or someone just like them getting elected in 2024 is much higher than I care to contemplate. Vinny or someone just like him can resurrect this comment in 2025 and I will seem very prescient.

Nah, Don Jr. will easily beat any of those losers.

You can't be serious....and yet there was no tongue emoji.

I'm perfectly serious. He is the ideal Republican candidate for 2024.
He's rich enough not to be bankrupted by insane witch hunts instigated by the Democrats.
He has the same take-no-prisoners approach as his father.
And maybe most important, he has already been subjected to the Democrats' worst efforts, so he is unafraid of what they could do to him.

Who else is as well-qualified?

[sophie]

Just a thought:

Would it be reasonable for members of this forum to consider buying and selling gold coins with fellow Gyro-HB members? No long distance traveling, quirky neighborhoods and, on a positive note, more personal interactions- everyone is a friend.. Premiums, fees and other annoyances might be mitigated.

Just a thought.

Interesting idea!!!

You'd either have to do it in person, or via a lawyer & escrow account (which is probably more costly than just paying fees to an online merchant).

BTW that goldmoney experience is exactly why I went for the Perth Mint...nothing like a 100+ year history and a stable goverment/economy to increase confidence that you won't end up getting swindled. It's also another issue with gold ETFs that bugs me, they all have a relatively short history and popped up in an era when gold was doing very well. They're untested in prolonged adverse conditions, such as gold in the 1980s.

When it comes to your investments, new and exciting is not always better and in fact it's generally not a good idea. You want boring, tried and true.

[dualstow]

...Would it be reasonable for members of this forum to consider buying and selling gold coins with fellow Gyro-HB members? No long distance traveling, quirky neighborhoods and, on a positive note, more personal interactions- everyone is a friend.. Premiums, fees and other annoyances might be mitigated.

Just a thought.

Interesting idea!!!

You'd either have to do it in person, or via a lawyer & escrow account (which is probably more costly than just paying fees to an online merchant).

...

I wish, bedraggled. Seems like mixing business and friendship, though, and imagine the bad blood it might create if one is reluctant to trade with a fairly new member, or someone's eagles are dirtier than advertised.

In the end, it's not that different from trying to trade with some guy in the parking lot outside an official dealer's shop.

I've probably mentioned that I cooked up an idea to trade silver coins with my friends at pizza. We take turns using credit cards but there are some people who never seem to have cash. I think we'd all have to buy the coins at the same rate to use them like poker chips, and even then, who will be left holding the bulk of them when silver is up? Or down?

We use Apple pay cash instead, and the paper version of the good old fungible dollar.

[vnatale]

Before I lost all of my precious metals in a horrible boating accident, I used to order them from ProvidentMetals.com and had nothing but a good experience with them.  They ship most quickly if you order via electronic check (echeck).

Did I actually find the first reference to a "boating accident"??!! Or, had there been references to it prior to the above?

Vinny

[vnatale]

At some point in the future we're going to know if physical gold was worth it or not. If physical and ETFs track well enough during the next gold panic buying episode or bubble, then there was no point to owning physical; let the selling begin. We won't know for a while.

Has the last month or so qualified as "At some point in the future"?

If so, what is your judgment if "physical and EFTs track well enough"?

I seem to remember reading some things recently here questioning why they were not?

Vinny

[ochotona]

At some point in the future we're going to know if physical gold was worth it or not. If physical and ETFs track well enough during the next gold panic buying episode or bubble, then there was no point to owning physical; let the selling begin. We won't know for a while.

Has the last month or so qualified as "At some point in the future"?

If so, what is your judgment if "physical and EFTs track well enough"?

I seem to remember reading some things recently here questioning why they were not?

Vinny

Apparently the retail gold supply chain is slammed. We're in a crisis, physical and ETF are not tracking at this time. That's a true statement, and it's also true the crisis will end someday.

[vnatale]

The only reason I'm thinking about trying JM Bullion is that, like Apmex, I can order online instead of on the phone and, unlike Apmex, I can have my order shipped via UPS. The post office ignored my paid sig request on a fountain pen, leaving it on my front step, so they can f__ right off as Ricky from Trailer Park Boys would say. Our UPS man is reliable.

Is there a way of having them ship it so it does not get delivered to your home but, instead, you have to go to the post office to sign for the package?

Assuming my bank offers safety deposit boxes this would represent the highest security method for me as the bank branch is right next door to the post office. Thus, I get coins and walk over to bank to put the coins in the safety deposit box.

[dualstow]

Is there a way of having them ship it so it does not get delivered to your home but, instead, you have to go to the post office to sign for the package?

I guess you’d rent a mailbox there. But, I would not be surprised if they refuse to ship to P.O. Boxes.
With FedEx and UPS, you can redirect deliveries to other partcipating locations like CVS, and pick up there. Then again, FedEx and UPS actually get packages to my door and knock.

[vnatale]

Is there a way of having them ship it so it does not get delivered to your home but, instead, you have to go to the post office to sign for the package?

I guess you’d rent a mailbox there. But, I would not be surprised if they refuse to ship to P.O. Boxes.
With FedEx and UPS, you can redirect deliveries to other partcipating locations like CVS, and pick up there. Then again, FedEx and UPS actually get packages to my door and knock.

We used to have someone in this forum who had all the answers to post office delivery matters....but there is a form of mail delivery that can be chosen so that a signature is required by the recipient before the post office will deliver it. And, after two or three attempts to deliver it by getting your signature...they leave a form directing you to go to the post office to pick it up. I was hoping there would be some form of shortcut wherein they don't even attempt to deliver...you HAVE to go to the post office to pick it up. I definitely don't want to risk them leaving it in my garage with no signature or, worse yet, giving it to a neighbor!

[vnatale]

At some point in the future we're going to know if physical gold was worth it or not. If physical and ETFs track well enough during the next gold panic buying episode or bubble, then there was no point to owning physical; let the selling begin. We won't know for a while.

In the intervening 2+ years since this was written....did we reach that "some point in the future". Did we reach it during that wild March 2020 period of time?

[SomeDude]

At some point in the future we're going to know if physical gold was worth it or not. If physical and ETFs track well enough during the next gold panic buying episode or bubble, then there was no point to owning physical; let the selling begin. We won't know for a while.

In the intervening 2+ years since this was written....did we reach that "some point in the future". Did we reach it during that wild March 2020 period of time?

O's logic is faulty. This is like saying "it wasn't worth buying fire insurance because my house never burned down". That's now how risk management works. You spend a little to retire larger risks.

And the bid/ask spread on physical coins is cheaper than the management fees on ETFs as long as you buy liquid coins at relatively low premiums and hold for 7-10 years. As time goes on the physical edge grows. Furthermore, in a crisis the premiums on physical might go up so high you earn a profit on premium more than the spot increase. That can't happen on so-called "paper gold".

Then there is the possible tax advantage and so many more.

There is almost no downside to physical gold over a paper derivative. Convenience in selling you say? Well....good luck selling digital gold when the market is closed for holidays, or weekends, or a black swan.

Hold physical. Store some in a trusted repository if you're concerned about home invasion, even though hiding gold at home is simple beyond belief.

[vnatale]

Hold physical. Store some in a trusted repository if you're concerned about home invasion, even though hiding gold at home is simple beyond belief.

Probably even more simple in a house like mine...which is absolutely packed everywhere with things. I've sometimes said if thieves broke into my house...one would say to the other..."Let's go elsewhere. It'd take us forever to find what is worth anything in this house."

[SomeDude]

Hold physical. Store some in a trusted repository if you're concerned about home invasion, even though hiding gold at home is simple beyond belief.

Probably even more simple in a house like mine...which is absolutely packed everywhere with things. I've sometimes said if thieves broke into my house...one would say to the other..."Let's go elsewhere. It'd take us forever to find what is worth anything in this house."

Unless you're in the ghetto, the threat of theft at home is very very low