Thanks for your responses. I wanted to address a couple of points you made here krogoth. I'm not attacking you just wanting to better understand the market for these items...


Stamps (and indeed coins) are produced by countries who have a strict and specific remit to produce a certain amount that is easily researchable  - you have no idea how many physical bitcoins are being produced other than what the manufacturer themselves tells you. Furthermore, let's say several years down the line certain items have become highly collectable, there is nothing to stop the manufacturer from producing more to take advantage of the high price. He owns the tooling remember, not you..


Ok so this is very interesting to me. So are you saying a loaded physical bitcoin is far more attractive to you than an unloaded one? If so why? What about the physical coins for which you provide your own public key and which contian no private key on them? Are these seen as useless / less attractive?


Hmmm didn't Casascius go bust and I can't seem to actually order anything from Lealana's clunky website at the moment - have they gone bust too? Have you ever actually taken your precious metals coins to check if they are actually gold / silver or are you just buying the non-precious metal coins?

I'm genuinely asking here... not trolling.

Hi All,

I have had a look through the collectibles section of the forum and have a few questions about physical precious metals bitcoins as I'm rather puzzled.

I hope you all don't mind enlightening me briefly....

I notice that the prices paid for these physical items - e.g. Denarium coins seem to be incredibly high relative to their actual value - for example a 1oz fine gold coin from Denarium currently costs EUR 3087. BTW I am singling out Denarium here for the purposes of creating a worked example, so my criticism is not leveled at them specifically. Let's go on...

A brief search of bullion dealers in Europe reveals many 1 oz fine gold coins for sale at an average of EUR 1100 per piece - so why is this Denarium item being sold for nearly three times the price?

OK I accept there will be a cost for tooling, packaging, applying the hologram, marketing, storage, funding costs etc. but surely this is an utter rip off? There is making a profit and then there is just scamming people. I could contact one of the many mints in Europe and they would charge me around EUR 250 for the tooling to produce the item plus a premium of around EUR 15 per piece over and above the intrinsic metal value to mint each coin, EUR 10 to ship them to me, then I could purchase the packaging and holograms online and put together the item and come on this website and sell them for half the cost of Denarium and still make a healthy profit. I know this because I have asked 2 of them and added it all up. The same principle applies to their silver coins by the way which are also hugely overpriced.

Furthermore, Denarium charges VAT on the gold coin they are selling which is actually illegal within the EU - there has been no VAT on investment grade gold in the EU for many years. I find this troubling...

Even more worrying, since there is no indication on the item of the mint that has manufactured it (and whether that mint is reputable or a member of the LBMA) how can you know that the item is even real gold / silver or whatever it purports to be. There is an obscure symbol and .999 engraved on the edge of the Denarium coin which frankly indicates nothing and can be replicated by anyone. Most of the crypto coins I have seen don't even have this...

Unlike a genuine mint, there is no mintage control over these companies - i.e. they can produce as many of the items as they wish so the collectable value is effectively zero.

Astonishingly, many of these coins also have the private key attached to them. How can anyone trust these companies with exposure to their private keys? What am I missing here.... do people actually use these items as offline wallets or are they just for fun... in which case they have zero utility which further undermines the high price charged.

Can some of you with more knowledge please enlighten me on any of the above... I would be very grateful to know your opinions... even better if a representative of the above company could post here I would also be interested to hear their response.

Thanks in advance

A concerned and confused newbie.