First Time Interested In Buying A Maple Leaf

. What are your questions?
John1

Thanks jbuck.
John1, Some questions that jump to mind... I looked at a Maple Leaf locally, but it was just in a bag. Should it have some kind of certificate?
And the guy wanted Spot + a 10% premium + a 3.5% swipe fee. Isn't that a bit steep? A web search says 2 to 5% over spot is more normal. He justified it as normal in this market because he says it's worth more than spot. Considering the source, that hardly convinced me.

The regular Maple Leafs are basically just bullion and do not come with a certificate. Spot plus 10% may be a little high, but not unusual now days.

Great to hear ROR.
Originally I wanted to buy the 1/10th Gold Maple Leaf. But he wanted 40% over spot for that one. I believe him that the premium would be a bit higher on a small piece, so lost interest in that one. Can you confirm that is common these days too?

I'm in USA. Those prices must be CAD, JimmyD?
He wanted $250 USD for the 1/10 Gold and $2535 USD for the 1-oz. Then an additional 3.5% on top of those prices to process the payment.
Also, they appeared to be in good, but second-hand condition.

@s9josh: Here are some numbers for you to consider:

As I write this, the spot price of gold is $1,789.00 USD per ounce.

APMEX, a large US-based on-line bullion dealer is selling 2021 Gold Maple Leaf coin as follows:

- One-Ounce: $1,879 USD (a markup of ~5%)
- Half-Ounce: $1,029 USD (+ ~15.0%)
- Quarter-Ounce: $510 (USD) (+ ~14.0%)
- Tenth-Ounce: $251 (+ ~40%)

(I'll leave it to you to do the conversions to CAD.)

I NEVER recommend to folks that they buy tenth-ounce gold coins for investment purpose; one-ounce coins are the best deal from a markup percentage perspective. It's better to save up for a one-ounce coin than to buy at interim points and incur the much higher markups.

I would say that buying the newer ones are fine because the RCM says they've mitigated the "milk spot" problem. I have coins pre-2019 that didn't have spots when I bought them but they do now. Also, the newer ones have more anti-counterfeiting technology.

Obviously, I am talking about silver maple leafs.

@s9josh

I am in Vancouver Canada... there is a bullion dealer in town that all of the LCS use to price match and they are one of the more aggressive in their pricing. They list their buy & sell prices in both CAD and USD. I recommend them as a pricing reference https://www.vbce.ca/gold-silver They are good for plain bullion and bars and only take cash or direct debit. But they don't ship.

Assuming you are not in Vancouver... in the US, APMEX.com are a good site for both plain bullion and a variety of specialty and world bullion. They have a few advantages over VBCE in that they ship, offer quantity discounts and accept payment in a variety of forms from wire to creditcard/paypal. Of course you will have a premium for credit card/paypal.


3.5% is on the high side of normal.. I usually see 2-3% but it is based on recovering the charge fee paid to visa/mastercard etc. Margins on bullion are not great and while most vendors will accept the margin hit for credit cards for most products... they won't for bullion. Just try to buy a car on a credit card... most dealers limit the amount that can be charged to a visa card as 2% of a $30k car will be a profit hit of $600 for the dealer regardless of the travel points you may earn. VBCE won't accept credit cards at all... only cash or debit.



If you want to buy and hold and don't forsee needing immediate liquidity, buy in the largest size you can afford. A kg of silver is better than 10oz and 100oz is better than 1kg. Of course, the same applies for gold but the $$ get pretty big quite quickly if you are talking about 1kg of gold... If, however, you are looking to blend numismatic interest with bullion, 1oz is by far the most common denomination for global issues and between Silver and Gold, you can range from Canadian Maples, US Eagles, Chinese Pandas, Australian Kookaburras, Kangaroos, Koalas, Somali Elephants... and the list goes on and on. APMEX is a good site to step through to evaluate your choices.