Investing In Gold

[Iceaxe]

Anyone here invest in gold? I'm not talking stocks or companies, but physical gold you can hold in your hand.

What's the best method for purchasing? Where do you buy from? Where do you redeem? Invest in coins, bars or What?

I have a small amount of gold and silver I've acquired over the years but I'm totally clueless about actually investing in precious metals. Where does one start?

One reason I ask is because about 70% of my day job is designing infrastructure for energy and mining so I have a pretty good idea if the price is going up or down before Joe Sixpack.

[tallsteve]

The insurance agency my wife works for also owns and operates a gold/silver company out of their office in Alpine (they even have a drive-up window). Don't know if it's what you're looking for but, here's their website: https://www.upma.org/

[Iceaxe]

Interesting, I like their 0% spread (buy/sell), but they recover those costs in vaulting fee's. But I don't want them to vault my money as I have secure facilities to vault, and it's not under my mattress...LOL...

The big deal breaker I noticed in buying gold is the difference in buy/sell. As I said, I know little about gold and I'm just trying to learn. But it does make sense to me that people have at least a minor position in precious metals.

FWIW: Last time I considered investing in precious metals I invested all my spare coin in 9mm and 5.56 NATO bullets instead and doubled my money every time Obama opened his mouth about regulating firearms and/or ammunition. Now with Trump and the GOP in control that market has declined dramatically. Not even a Las Vegas massacre could force a bump in the market.

[devo_stevo]

Commodities are like that. Values are based more on emotion rather than reality. I'm not really a fan, but if I had extra cash that needed a home and I didn't mind losing it if that were to happen, I'm not opposed to buying gold or silver.

[Scott P]

I used to work for the gold industry.

Generally, when the stock market is strong, gold prices go down because people by stocks instead. When the stock market is down, the price of gold usually goes up because people buy gold.

If you think the stock market will continue to go up, you may want to wait to buy.

Generally, don't buy coins other than .999 if you just want the gold rather than to collect coins. Unless you are wanting to invest in coins for the collectability, buy bars. Coins are seldom .999 gold (which is what most gold bought for investment is) and if you want to cash the coins in for the ounces of gold in the coin, you won't get full price because the need to be refined. Having a .5 gold coin isn't worth 1/2 The value of an equivalent weight .999 bar. It's worth a lot less. If you do find .999 gold coins, you could buy those, but as mentioned, only buy .999 coins unless you are out for the collectivity of the coins.

The company I worked for us no longer in Salt Lake. If you want to buy gold without getting scammed (there are a lot of gold scams out there), talk to your bank (unless you don't trust your bank). Most banks sell gold in coin form, but some sell it in bar form. If they don't sell bars, they will likely know who to contact.

Most of the gold we refined went to banks and the government.

Most of our gold bars were 400 ounces, so you did have to have a fairly big check book to buy one. If you can afford it, these are your best bet since you can always get full value or close to full value world wide. These are the standard bars that are traded world wide in reserves and banks.

We also made bb sized gold grain filled jars that were one ounce.

[rockgremlin]

Coin shops also sell gold and silver in bar form. There's a place in Sugarhouse (All About Coins) that sells gold in its crude right-outta-the-ground form. Crude nuggets that were recovered via placer mining in rivers. That looked really cool, and really appealed to me.

[Iceaxe]

The problem I now see with investing in gold is the difference between 'the spread', which is the price you buy it for and the price you sell it for.

If I bought gold today I'd pay $1280 an ounce, and if I immediately turned around and sold it back I could sell it for $1220, if I was lucky. You can see that is a big hit. So my new thinking on this is the best way to make bank with gold is to be the gold dealer. I was hoping this would be a little easier. I think I'll look at something else to invest it.

Damn Trump, it's all his fault for toppling the high price of guns and ammo...

[devo_stevo]

Don't worry. Wait for another democrat to get elected and those guns and ammo will be worth a lot more again.

[Iceaxe]

True, but I think it's going to be at least 7 more years.