Where To Buy Bullion

How can you guarantee the quality of gold and other metals via mail order?

As with virtually everything else in life, we cannot guarantee this. The best that we can do is to get the odds of success as far in our favor as possible.

This can be done by doing careful and thorough on-line research of the various dealers who sell on the web. The larger dealers have a lot invested in their reputations and do not want to lose them. They know that in the Internet age, a few unhappy customers will SCREAM their heads off, that many potential customers will see those complaints, and will hesitate to buy from them. The big dealers like: APMEX, Provident Metals, and Silvertowne all have good reputations. You can buy from them with an excellent chance of getting exactly what you ordered and at a reasonable price.

One cannot be so certain of buying things on ebay, IMHO. If a dealer there has a lot of feedback and a very high satisfaction rating those are good indications that you will be successful in dealing with them. I'm not saying that it is not possible to buy successfully from an ebay dealer. Many have done so and are quite satisfied with what they bought. There is more risk, however.

There are a number of gold and silver items that are being faked these days and ebay is an ideal place to sell them. You can do a Google search for "fake gold" or "fake silver" to find a lot of info on this. This will give you some idea of particular coins or bars that have the greatest chance of being fakes, so they can be avoided.

Buying gold or silver on Craig's List is also a risky venture. It can be done successfully or not so successfully. It's pretty much all a matter of odds. Most people who sell on CL will want to meet in a public place, such as a bank or a coffee shop. They will want a cash transaction. Both of these are reasonable requests, although walking around with a lot of cash in your pockets entails some risk all by itself.

I have bought successfully from APMEX and can recommend them. Their deals are reasonable, their customer service excellent, their product quality is very good, and their PM variety and quantity quite good.

Just about an ATB from gainesvillecoins.com - they had the cheapest prices with shipping out of provident or APMEX.

I had a woman wanted to know if we had $5000 worth of silver, which was just $200 face at 25 times, and would we take a check?

Yes, cash only.

Her excuse, after I told her she could get cash at the bank about half a block down the street:

I don't want to be carrying that much money around.

Even 100 fifties wouldn't be noticeable in a purse. $200 face silver weighs around 14#.

Sorry I can't help you, ma'am, I don't like carrying that big a rubber check around.

I am not looking to collect coins. I am looking at getting gold bullion coins of about $10,000 to be able to use it in place of US currency if it collapses. So any advice for that or is all gold bullion coins considered collectable?

Anything someone collects is collectable.

A more accurate way to put it is "most gold coins are bullion".

If you're looking for a reputable dealer, either Gainesville Coins or Provident Metals offers a great selection at competitive rates. The more popular coin, the higher premium you're going to pay. If you're looking to buy for strictly investment purposes, consider bars, Gold Maples or Kruggerands. American Gold/Silver Eagles and a few others are in such high demand these days, they're fetching pretty high premiums (if you can get your hands on them!).