Bitcoin Forum

For a complete newbie. How does one buy and sell physical gold and silver? What are the best practices?

GoldMoney.com

The best, safest and easiest way.

If not, buy a few coins or small bars online.

Thanks for asking this, i was curious about this too. I wanted to make a small investment in gold and silver too and didnt know where to start.

What is the best place to track prices also? This may be an idiotic question, but how do we verify the purity of the metal we receive when buying online

I just checked out that website, and it looks like you have to wire money to their bank first before you can purchase.   Also it looks like you have to store it in one of their vaults (which they charge for).   Is there not a way  to just purchase through them and store it yourself?   That seems a little sketchy as you would never even have the metal in your actual possession...  I could be wrong, I just briefly browsed their website..

There a many, many places you can buy Gold and Silver online. Some take personal checks, some credit cards, some Paypal, some bank wires, and at least one takes Bitcoin. Most, if not all, will send the gold/silver right to you.

A few off the top of my head:

Amagi Metals (they take Bitcoin)
Texas Precious Metals
Apmex

Do a little research on Google and you can find a whole lot more.

You can buy @ bank, @ person, @ exchange @ many places :)

I would advise you to compare the prices very well because some merchants have outragious premiums and some online sellers are sca.mmers

Peter Schiff sells at a low premium on europacmetals.com

Only buy from local trusted dealers. Usually customs aren't too thrilled to find large gold and silver packages, and depending on where you live you will have to pay an extra ransom and answer all kinds of questions, and if you fail they might confiscate it and fine you.

If you live in the EU pay good attention to VAT in the various countries, it varies a lot on PM's.

If you are in it only for the metal and don't want to be a coin collector then stick to buying low premium coins. Something like Eagles in the US and Philharmonicas in the EU.

Where in the world do you live?

Since you are in digital currency forum, I would let you know for one of the option which is like buying a digital currency as well as buying gold and silver. XNF (NoFiatCoin) is a crypto which can be redeemed for gold and silver at anywhere at anytime. As far as buying and transferring and taking a position in crypto is concerned XNF is one of the option.

I have used both Provident Metals and JM Bullion.  Both had similar ship times, but they seem to have some of the best prices I've found for online bullion dealers.

Also note to OP:  when you want to sell your gold silver, its MUCH easier to move American Eagles or Canadian Maples than generic bullion.

You may also want to consider local shops.  Some people are afraid of another gold confiscation, it would be difficult to track a purchase made in cash.  For silver, in addition to bullion you can also buy or look for pre-1965 quarters and half dollars, which are 90% silver.

Thanks for this.  I was shopping around online, and saw so many different mints and stamps on each, and i didn't know if one was better than the other since they all weighed the same...

buy 1kg bars that are sealed to prevent tarnish. if you want to store them or sell them at a reputable place, before selling you will have to recert/retest them.

I was looking at some of the 1kg bars of silver and potentially some of gold after, do you have any recommendations on which ones are better than the others? 

There is a list of companies whose PMs count as highest quality, which is called "good delivery". You can find a list of all good delivery companies at the LBMA website. Those are highest quality PMs that should be accepted anywhere.

Only buy good delivery!

I'm looking for a page where I can buy gold and silver with bitcoin - Is there a retailer within the European Union??

I don't like to pay toll just for importing goods to the good old EU.  :o

In EU there is http://www.bitgild.com/ (http://www.bitgild.com/) but I cannot comment on whether they are trustworthy or not... But is it a good idea to buy gold and silver with bitcoin? well, please do the math yourself before buying anything. You can easily end up paying way too much for PMs if you don't.

I know this is a longshot given how wide of a user base is here, but does anyone know of a place that i can walk into and physically buy gold or silver in the ORange County, CAlifornia area?  I'd feel way more comfortable in person, even the the sales person would probably be trying to swindle me anyway. Lol

I know this is a longshot given how wide of a user base is here, but does anyone know of a place that i can walk into and physically buy gold or silver in the ORange County, CAlifornia area?  I'd feel way more comfortable in person, even the the sales person would probably be trying to swindle me anyway. Lol

Why to buy a gold and a sliver?

better to buy Bitcoin!

I have bitcoins, just looking to diversify a little. I have a few stocks and then some bonds and mutual funds, as well as LTC. I dont have any silver or gold so it interests me

Did you end up buying any gold or silver?

It feels like an excellent time to buy some with a medium to long term perspective, the FED will announce in the coming months that it stops tappering and that it will increase QE and Gold price will skyrock

Go with the bars and rounds. Buy from trusted sources. Get into community. By a large volume for best prices. And if you are in it, buy regularly. Only make decision after studding.
 Best way to sell to your community members other wise to dealers but they'll give you less.

Just look for pawn shops and store that advertise that they will buy your gold.  If they buy chances are pretty good they will sell.  There's also coin collectible shops, it should be pretty easy to find stores in OC.

I thought you're poor and homeless? You owe your lawyer $2.5 million.  :-\

Check out JM Bullion if you're still looking. They don't accept Bitcoin yet  :(

Thanks man, this is more good info that I will definitely use when I go shopping for some metals :)

There are loads of coin shops where you are at. the most important things to consider when buying is making sure you are getting as close to the spot price as you can and that the silver/gold will sell when you need it to (also that it is real of course...). Silver is silver, but USsilver eagles, Canadian Maples, EU philharmonics, and the panda coins if you want, probably have the best resale value but they have the highest premiums, especially the pandas. 100oz bars can be more convenient for some people and you should get closer to spot with a 100oz bar depending on what it is and where you are buying it. generic silver has lower premiums, the buffalos are not a bad choice. just make sure you know what the price of silver is the exact moment you are in the shop looking to buy. its been going up a bit lately it might cool off for a while but 2-10xx years i think its fair to be pretty bullish on silver/gold. the attitude all over the world would have to drastically shift for gold and silver to go pre-911 levels and just the amount of times the US monetary base has been multiplied by 2008 will have anybody scratching their head as to what will happen over these coming years in all sorts of markets. what usually would take about 10 years for the Monetary base to double, has more than tripled in the last 5 years since 2008. the sheer volume of illegitimate federal reserve notes being pumped into the systems cannot align with anything other than a rising prices of just about everything, including gold and silver, and btc.

good luck  :D

I buy cheap gold and silver at pawn shops.

I took a look at the good delivery list yesterday and have to say I'm a bit confused:

http://www.lbma.org.uk/pages/index.cfm?page_id=147&title=good_delivery_lists

I didn't find the Austrian Mint on the list (produces the Philharmonic and should definitely be on there), but I found a producer that I know is not first class (Degussa). You should get some more info on all of this  - and let me know if you do!

EDIT: Just looked at it again, could it be the Austrian Mint is not in it because listed are only companies with bars of at least 400 ounces (=12kg, gold) and 1000 ounces (=30kg, silver)? See "Good Delivery Rules".

For gold/silver comparison purposes, you would have to take the overall world money creation though.

To my knowledge, about $15 trillion dollars worth of money have been created worldwide since 2008 or so. Do you have a different numbers (and a link or source)?

Overall, I totally agree with you, just interested in learning more about this topic. I googled it and it was hard to find any info.

This is where I have been looking actually.  Have you had good experiences with them?  Any recommendations on which gold or silver bars to purchase from them?   There are so many different choices...

I have ordered from them.  I paid with a check (takes about 3 weeks to get your order) but you get a better price than when you use a card.

I would say look at buying American Gold/Silver Eagles or Canadian Gold/Silver Maple Leafs in whatever size you want.  They are the easiest to move, and are always going to stay at a higher premium over spot than generic rounds.

If you want others (bars, generic rounds) you can get them a little closer to spot, but I would recommend keeping your collection to 50% or more of US/Canadian minted gold/silver. 

Oh really?   I was specifically looking at buying the 1kg bars..like the OPM metals silver 1kg bar, and potentially a 1kg bar of gold in the future...would you not recommend that one?

I bought some Krugers with Bitcoins on https://zilvergoudwinkel.nl/
They're located in Holland.
Quick delivery, no problems.

Buy Bitcoin Litecoin and Dogecoins. thats like Gold, Silver and Bronze.

                  I guess you're right about that for comparison purposes you would have to consider all fiat printing, not just US fed notes but euros and yen and renminbi and rupee etc... the numbers i used are all fairly rough and are just from my memory of sources ive read or seen places. Though i found some pretty interesting numbers by googling all the different fiat currencies Monetary base chart (tradingeconomics . com has a lot of info) for the last 10 years. there are charts for other national currencies as well. If you looked at all those carefully enough you could figure out more precisely how much money has been created lately. 15 trillion definitely sounds feasible. I dont know if all that wealth creation necessarily correlates to higher silver and gold prices though. I think its a correlation that could probably be proved or disproved pretty well either way with a lot of analyzation.

Interesting website, thanks, but a bit hard to read! How would you look up money creation on there?

I just know China prints $425 billion per month:

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2014/02/Jan%20China%20TSF%20vs%20Fed%20BOJ.jpg

Long term, I would say the PM prices would have to adopt, but of course, what has always been keeping them back is that incredible amount of manipulation. Also, the money is still with the banks, it needs to go out into circulation. But I think a lot of this will happen and PM prices will skyrocket.

I accept BTC for gold and silver: bitcoincommodities.com
Try me out, I hear I'm doing an okay job so far.

Where are you located?

If you are on trading economics home page find the "indicators" drop down menu and click on "more indicators". under the "money" section there are a few options M1 M2 M3 for example. if you click on you'll see the money creation of every country and if you click on one individually it'll show you a chart. how much/at what rate/during which years. etc...

your right, almost all the credit that was created lately is still held onto by the big banks.I would think prices of everything will have to adopt once it starts creeping out more quickly, including silver. but like you said manipulation is not a fantasy,  a lot of people think its amazing that silver can be so cheap as it is today with all the fiat out there. i personally thought all the futures contracts and paper gold/silver contracts people have been selling this last year (to re-buy real gold/silver? get out of the market totally? idk...) has made it look like the price has gone down. i dont know how much truth there is to that but I know the price is tied to all the electronic paper metal markets as well not just the physical stuff. I dont think the people who set up these deals have all the metal or even the paper money to pay back all the people who bought paper contracts.

Any thoughts on "OPM Metals"  gold or silver bars?  Those were the ones that I was looking at to purchase and then just store in safety deposit box...

(OPM) Ohio precious metals is a reputable company. you should have no problem selling them if the time ever came. they are not backed by the government like eagles but that doesn't matter to a lot of people who invest in PM. as long as its real and you get a good deal all is good.

Berlin, Germany.

Cool, thanks, that's a great website I didn't know before! I will give you a great website too, it's a blog that follows the PM manipulation on a daily basis, I have learned a lot from it:

http://blog.milesfranklin.com/

Just be aware those guys are selling PMs.

For sure there is only a fraction of the paper gold existing in physical form, the Comex was at 110:1 (paper:physical) a short while ago, as you probably know.

Manipulation has been at absoluetely unprecedented levels, look in the blog above.

Ha ha, when you speak in this forum about PM manipulation, everybody takes it as a given, while out there in the real world people just think you are a lunatic. That's one reason why I like this forum - well informed people!

Biggest problem of investing into silver or gold or most of this kind of material things is fact that you need to keep it somewhere and it creates costs and when you buy/sell it you need middle man, and that's another cost. In US, mostly on channels like foxnews investment in gold is heavily advertised. The actual benefit of this kind of investment is rather hard to be determined. It should be safe, so does a lot of other kind of options, including super safe treasure bills, that creates bigger profit to rather stable gold price (well ok recently were weird times). Some people are afraid country they bought treasure bills from would collapse, but it could only happen at some kind of world war (I'm talking about big normal country, not South Sudan or Western Sahara) and if that would happen your gold would be useless assuming you would survive nuclear holocaust. Price of gold and silver is kind of agreement between people that this metal is actually worth something. It is shiny, you can make jewelry out of it, it works nice with electricity but that's about it. Diamonds have same problem (actually diamonds price is PR-stunt created by monopoly's but shh....). Since you find this forum you know there are certain ways of buy virtual currency that might be more useful in future. Also you can always buy Microsoft stocks.

I think that a large portion of people here enjoy the volatility because it makes their investment seem more exciting to them.   Microsoft, while probably being a solid long term blue chip stock, moves slower than a snail in comparison to cryptos at the moment...

Could you elaborate on that? I know nothing about diamonds.

Gold bars:
Gold bars are tangible, we can be sure they exist.
Their value will never fall to zero.
They are neither a liability nor a security.
Lower margin than bullion coins.
Low risk.

Relatively low liquidity, especially for bigger bars
Shipment, storage and insurance costs
Burglary or theft risks

A friend once introduced me to a Gold company that lets people invest their money into, and according to him, you can also convert your Golds to physical form and they will send it to you. But I don’t really know if it’s true, cause I haven’t tried it. Maybe you can check it out and do more research more about it. The name is Bitgold.

If you're into crypto, I'd go with vaultoro.

if for me as a newbie, I want to get some bitcoin to buy gold and silver.

To start off you should invest small amounts in safe coin. You can play Bitcoin, ETH, and a few other famous coins before diving into other coins