Best way to buy Gold bars or coins?

morbius

Hi,

I have between £1000 - £2000 to invest and I was thinking about buying some Gold. Does anyone have any recommendations on where/what to buy? I've tried googling but it all looks a lot more complicated than I first thought....I thought I would just send off for some kruggerands or something but it looks like that is not the best way to do it



Thanks,
Mark Morb

cheerfulcat

You can buy over the 'phone - two reputable dealers are Chard and Baird & Co. Baird used to be more expensive than Chard - I expect that's still the case.

davetrousers

The current rate (on BBC website) is $883 per ounce.

merlinthehappypig

No CGT liability on sovereigns or Brittanias, unlike most other forms of gold investment (krugerrands included), if that's likely to be an issue.

cheerfulcat

The current rate (on BBC website) is $883 per ounce.

There's a premium on top...

purch

You'll struggle to buy an actual physical Gold Bar for £ 2,000, as the one's used for trading (London Delivery) are 400 oz or the smaller one's are called Kilobars which as the name suggests is 1,000 grams or 35 oz

Actually in the world of Gold they refer to everything as Bars, as long as it has an official 'stamp' on it !!!

isofa

The London Good Delivery Bar is the standard "large" bar kept in bank vaults, 12.5Kg and around £70,000 at the moment. But as purch says, nearly everything is referred to as a bar, you can buy them for a few ounces!

free4440273

on working lunch, last year, they had a news story about this: i forget the technical name they used, but you can purchase some really beautiful looking small 'bars' (they called it something else, forget what) which are chisel stamped* with size (oz.).

*i mean 'embossed' :rotfl:

meester

you can buy gold in the form of an ETC. This will track the price of gold.

http://www.etfsecurities.com/en/securities/etfs_securities.asp

If you want to buy physical gold, buy a coin, they are more aesthetically pleasing.

There are quite a few coins that sell just above scrap value.

I would look for an attractive coin, find its actual gold weight, and convert it into troy ounces.

For instance:

http://www.taxfreegold.co.uk/1976austrian1000schillingsbamberg.html

0.3906 troy ounces of gold * $883 = $344

They are selling for £150 = $289, so there is an instant profit of 16% if they will actually honour that price. I suspect not, but you can easily find the gold content of a coin by fineness * weight. One troy ounce is 31.10 grams, and the price of a troy ounce is on the BBC's website. Google will convert dollars into pounds: "1 gbp in usd"

cheerfulcat

meester wrote: »

There are quite a few coins that sell just above scrap value.

I doubt it. Happy to be corrected though!

They are selling for £150 = $289, so there is an instant profit of 16% if they will actually honour that price. I suspect not,

from Chard's site ( the one you've linked to )

Gold bullion prices fluctuate constantly. We don't try to maintain a current price quotation on our website.

They're certainly a good bit cheaper than Baird, but they're still in business to make money!

purch

some really beautiful looking small 'bars'

There are many different types of small Gold Bar that exist and can be bought n sold....they have lots of weird names like Fillet, Doughnut, Tola, Cartoon etc etc

They always attract a premium and are not always 100% pure

The closest to pure is the London Good Delivery bar mentioned above