Gyroscopic Investing

Recourse?  Presumably the same as any other unsecured creditor.  Get in line, hope for the best.  The best could be $0.

Caveat emptor is the best way to deal with any financial transaction.  Buying $350K in a single transaction seems like too little caveat.  And if this was the first purchase through Tulving, way too little.

And the most-recent comment, the one that cannot afford to write off a $20,000 loss, probably should not be buying gold in the first place (e.g. possibility of 50% decline, etc.).

An easy way to prevent such situations is to 1) buy in smaller lots, and 2) hand money to gold vendor while simultaneously receiving gold.  After careful inspection of said gold product, of course.

TennPaGa wrote: What recourse does someone like this have?

Related questions: For PS... How would the Private Society deal with something like this?

Off the top of my head, I'm not sure, but it's hard to imagine it could be any worse than the status quo, i.e. basically no recourse at all.

It's possible that in the Private Society there would be a kind of "financial transaction insurance" you could purchase that would insure you against financial losses incurred from massive fraud in this kind of situation. I don't know if it would actually work, or if such a thing even exists today.

Pointedstick wrote:

TennPaGa wrote: What recourse does someone like this have?

Related questions: For PS... How would the Private Society deal with something like this?

Off the top of my head, I'm not sure, but it's hard to imagine it could be any worse than the status quo, i.e. basically no recourse at all.

It's possible that in the Private Society there would be a kind of "financial transaction insurance" you could purchase that would insure you against financial losses incurred from massive fraud in this kind of situation. I don't know if it would actually work, or if such a thing even exists today.

Not exactly insurance - but escrowed transactions exist, see https://www.escrow.com/ (buyer sends the money to escrow.com, escrow.com tells the seller they have the money, seller sends the product, buyer tells escrow.com they have the product, escrow.com sends the money to the seller). 

rickb wrote: Not exactly insurance - but escrowed transactions exist, see https://www.escrow.com/ (buyer sends the money to escrow.com, escrow.com tells the seller they have the money, seller sends the product, buyer tells escrow.com they have the product, escrow.com sends the money to the seller).

It sounds like this would be quite a good idea for online gold dealers to adopt, even as an option. Of course, the fraudulent ones would most likely avoid it like the plague!

Deposits at the Perth Mint are insured by the government of Western Australia. Just saying...

I've looked into the Perth Mint, but the 1% storage fee for allocated gold just seems too expensive to me.  Can anyone out there help me to justify why that is not such a bad deal?

Why use allocated? Unallocated still gives you ownership over gold bullion.

High transaction costs,dealer risk,insurance,storage,etc.,etc.,etc.

No wonder some folks think an ETF is no greater risk..

Ad Orientem wrote: Why use allocated? Unallocated still gives you ownership over gold bullion.

Can you give me some more details on this?  What are the fees involved with unallocated?  What is the minimum purchase amount?  Thanks!!!

I don't know about Perth Mint, but global gold has unallocated and allocated storage, with fees for unallocated being in the range of 0.5%/year, depending on account size, and allocated 0.2% higher.

MangoMan wrote:

Ad Orientem wrote: Why use allocated? Unallocated still gives you ownership over gold bullion.

It appears as if Perth no longer offers new unallocated accounts. Could that be true? Bron?

Oh no! Perth Mint's unallocated storage storage was dirt cheap. But now that I think about it, I seem to recall Bron warning on another thread that it was likely going to go away.