New To Buying Gold Coins...

Ok you guys are gradually educating me. Looks like the ones that are making a good mark up are the dealers when they can buy a coin and get the value of it plus spot price. See today there is a lot of diffenenct on spot as silver is 3.99 over spot which sounds reasonable to charge over the price of the coin http://www.apmex.com/Category/2/Sil...__Prior.aspx

and gold is 54.95 which looks to me totally ridiculous
http://www.apmex.com/Category/21/Go...__Prior.aspx

But when you look at percentages, silver's premium is much higher.

If I invested $1000 for each metal, I'd get 1.2 ounces of Gold Eagles, paying about $70 in premiums.

$1000 will get me about 90 ounces of Silver Eagles, but the premium will be a whopping $360 !

FDIC insured CDs ? Where do you see that ?

Dominican Republic #8800; (does not equal sign) Puerto Rico. If you put you money in there, the government will take it over, say is American encroachment, etc etc and you will never see the greenbacks again.

I think it would be safer buying Obama coins and getting a return

I think this post is getting a little bit awry from its title.

Anyways Bob, if you're still reading this, the cheapest form of liquid (readily able to buy and sell) are 1 oz bars or 1 oz Krugerrands. Get some before Brownie's plan to print pounds into the horizon starts kicking in.

which begs the question.. how does one become a dealer?

One problem with that- where are you going to buy the gold under spot price so you can actually make a profit? That is why they have to charge a premium over spot because they have to pay the spot price(or more) to purchase it in the first place.



Gas prices in the US fluctuate partly due to EPA mandated regional blends(aka boutique fuels) which tends to create isolated shortages in certain areas because you cannot supply California with Texas gas- it doesn't work that since there are about 15 different blends for the whole country and they cannot be interchanged unless the EPA specifically waives the requirements.

Also, you might want to take that $20,000 and add a zero or two to it because 20k won't get you much of a discount and is largely insignificant in the grand scheme of things. To become an Authorized Purchaser of Gold Eagles from the US Mint, you have to have tangible assets of $50,000,000 and be able to move 100,000 oz of gold in a 12 month period and then you still have to pay over prevailing spot price(3% for 1oz coins and scaling to 9% for 1/10oz coins). If you want to get "gold" as close to spot as possible, open an ETF account or a pool account from a place like Kitco. Those both have lower costs due to the fact that you never physically handle the gold.

The problem is that if the company becomes insolvent, you may be stuck holding on to a piece of paper. Unlike trading stocks, I like to be able to touch my gold.

Biokemist covered the topic of dealers who buy direct from the mint. Most "dealers" don't do that, and have to pay additional premium over spot for their gold coins. If you turn over enough rocks, and if you are willing to purchase large enough quantities, you can get them at wholesale cost, or at least close to it (which, again, is NOT the same as spot).

If you pay $55 over spot for a one oz gold coin, the person you are buying it from is not making out like a bandit. You can make better margins buying and selling sunglasses, if that's what you'd prefer.