Investing & Markets

Make better decisions with investing tips, technical analysis, market commentary, and more

Personal Finance

Make more, save more, spend smarter, and keep more of what you earn

Business News

Stock market news & analysis

Opinion

How to Buy and Sell Physical Gold and Silver, Part 2

By Tim OBrien on 10/26/2010 – 12:54 pm PDTLeave a Comment

This is part 2 of my interview with Doug Eberhardt, author of Buy Gold and Silver Safely: The Only Book You Need to Learn How to Buy or Sell Gold and Silver. As with yesterday’s post, I’ll include my questions in bold/red and Doug’s answers below each one. And at the end of the post, I’ll add in some commentary to add perspective to why I asked the question and/or what I think of the response.

We ended yesterday with Doug telling us the types of items he recommends people buy when they purchase physical gold and silver. Today, we get into detail on these, especially where to buy and a bit about how pricing works (more on this in the next post).

Assuming I decide I want to buy one (or more) of the above, how do I locate a reputable place to buy them? And can you give me some examples of the “best” places to buy them in your opinion? 
 
My company, “Buy Gold and Silver Safely” sells the gold and silver I recommend in my book at a 1% flat fee. Other companies I recommend are APMEX, and Tuvling. There might be more, but the one issue that I hear people complain to me the most is the push by some of these low cost companies into the rare coins, or other coins where the dealer makes more profit. That’s why my book is clear in “asking the right questions” of dealers to begin with.

What does “1% flat fee” mean? Does that mean that if gold is at $1000 per ounce then a coin with one ounce of silver in it would cost $1,010 if purchased from you? (Editor’s note: we’ll cover the topic of pricing in greater detail tomorrow.)

The 1% flat fee is the fee that is added to the ask price. So technically you have the spot price, plus the fee that goes to the U.S. Mint, and any dealer fees are added to what the base price is. A gold dealer legally cannot sell bullion gold for less than what they get from the U.S. Mint for. 
 
Is 1% good? What do others charge? Can’t I buy American Eagle coins cheaper directly from the government?

1% is the lowest in the industry. Others will charge anywhere from 1% to 13% or even more if they can get away with it. On IRAs for example, I know of a broker at one gold dealer who told me they have leeway to charge up to 30% for bullion

Pages: 1 2

Tags: american eagle coins, asking the right questions, , bullion gold, ,

Related Articles:

  1. How to Buy and Sell Physical Gold and Silver, Part 1
  2. Investment in gold and other precious metals is gaining popularity
  3. Candente Gold Confirms Gold and Silver Grades in Remnant Resource at El Oro
  4. Why Silver May Be a Better Investment than Gold
  5. iShares Silver Trust (ETF)(SLV) Sell Off

Leave a comment!

Add your comment below, or trackback from your own site. You can also subscribe to these comments via RSS.

Be nice. Keep it clean. Stay on topic. No spam.

You can use these tags:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

This is a Gravatar-enabled weblog. To get your own globally-recognized-avatar, please register at Gravatar.