Thinking of buying gold bars !!

buddy143

Just looking at the gold prices, I am thinking of buying 2 gold bars (each 100grams) in Birmingham.
anybody had any experience? Can we make any bargaining? I know in India, we do it but is it the same here as well in the jewellery quarter?

Tiburonsmoke

Check with a few dealers online first. Get a feel for the price. Try Chards, Baird, Bullion By Post, and a few others recommended by Moneyweek in their "How to Invest in Gold" article. Watch the spot price (their websites are updated regularly through the day, so check while you are in the shop). A friend has told me not to be afraid to haggle with the dealer. Sometimes it pays off. Best of luck!

greenbubble

a couple of things put me off from buying 100g bars , heaven forbid that gold actually did go to the moon price wise , you could easily see a future sale price breach the capitol gains tax (ok , ok , this is an extreme example) therefore holding in smaller sizes would help avoid this when the time comes to sell .

secondly avoid the above all together and look at 1ounce Brittanias instead (cgt exempt) as an alternative , admitedly there is a small numismatist markup on coins .

Tiburonsmoke has mentioned some good outlets , i will add http://www.coininvestdirect.com/ to the list , i have used them and have been happy with the service.

dtsazza

buddy143 wrote: »

Just looking at the gold prices, I am thinking of buying 2 gold bars

I never understand why people apply backwards logic to shares/commodities/investments in general.

If the price is high, all it means is that they are expensive to buy now. And ceteris paribus, they're more likely to fall back towards the long-term averages than continue to tear away from them.

Don't get me wrong, if you think the fundamentals are there for gold to continue appreciating in price, then you may as well buy it now. (Personally, I'm not convinced; I think it's an (over)reaction to the Greek default and the US debt ceiling, neither of which I consider likely to sustain the gold price in the short-medium term unless you really believe in an apocalyptic scenario.)

But if you're buying just because the price is high, then you're doing it wrong. Buy low, sell high.

greenbubble

dtsazza wrote: »

I think it's an (over)reaction to the Greek default and the US debt ceiling

man thats one (over)reaction

sorry for the selective quoting as you gave good advice , just trying to put a different slant on it

Michael_Corleone

I would also suggest coininvestdirect because they are great, but then I'm lazy and it means I don't need to face a member of the public to buy silver or gold.

dtsazza

greenbubble wrote: »

man thats one (over)reaction

sorry for the selective quoting as you gave good advice , just trying to put a different slant on it

No, that's fair enough - I was just giving my personal opinion of why I don't think the fundamentals make gold a good medium/long-term buy. (And besides, that shows a large rise already during the crisis; generally I'd only expect gold to rise if things get worse, and it looks like on aggregate they'll get slowly better.)

By the same token, if someone wants to invest in gold because they have a specific rationale for doing so, including an exit point (which is often the hardest part), then that's all fine as well.

My post was basically just pointing out that "I should buy it because it's expensive" isn't a good strategy, but it's one that people seem to get drawn to with non-cash investments.

Ark_Welder

greenbubble wrote: »

sorry for the selective quoting as you gave good advice , just trying to put a different slant on it

How about a selective slant from 1980 to 2001?

greenbubble

volker managed to get inflation/stagflation under control by controling the money supply.

eg.

Ark_Welder

greenbubble wrote: »

volker managed to get inflation/stagflation under control by controling the money supply.

So your post #5 is misleading. There is no correlation to the debt ceiling and the price of gold. Selective scaling has been used on the data sets to imply a link, whereas there is none.


Post elsewhere have already shown the following history of the debt ceiling going back to Paul Volker's time (1979-87):

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/54236000/gif/_54236326_us_debt_464_corr.gif

greenbubble

thanks for me making stop and think , always nice to get a reminder that critical thinking is what matters when it comes to avoiding being sheared along with the rest of the herd.

'correlation does not imply causation'

i did manage to find a graph that is plotted back to 1971 till 2010



if you get time would you kindly link to the posts you mention as i have not managed to find them yet.