Best way to buy Gold bars or coins?

murphydavid

mini_lidi wrote: »

I would prefere to physically hold my gold or silver and have a budget of £500-£1000, what would you recommened?

If it helps and I'm new to this, but was interested so: Just read all the above and did some internet research. It all sounds very wishy washy to me. But for what its worth my summary is this:
It seems if you want real gold then you go to
chards: http://www.taxfreegold.co.uk/ (there were a couple of others much the same)
or if you don't like the postal system you can go to a bullion dealer in London and buy over the counter or if you can hack the language barrier you'd be better off to buy over the counter in most any Swiss bank.
Then there's e-bay but that is getting into the complexities of buying from someone you have never seen over the internet - (I've not been keen on that since the time my e-bay goods didn't turn up and e-bay help (less) told me my only recourse was to go to the police who wrote me and my stuff off as a crime statistic- but that's another story).

Any gold held by a "middle man" all you ever see is a bit of paper and has historically been subject to fraud.

So to buy the real thing from Chard's
If you look at their buy sell prices for say a Krugerrand it would appear that you pay a 9% fee when you buy and presumably 9% when you sell.
see
http://www.taxfreegold.co.uk/wesellkrugers.html
where it indicates
1Krugerrand with 1troy oz of gold. if 1troy oz of gold had a spot price of £600 they would charge you £654 for it that's a 9% premium.
So If you go that way as an investment you need the Gold spot price to go up by 18% + the value of inflation over the holding period + a profit margin.
Sounds like a game for the experts (who win) and the mugs (who loose) - unless you are a dealer that is.
So as a Mug with limited time I'm off to Switzerland - but just for the winter sport.

nrsql

Think www.coininvestdirect.com work out cheaper than Chard - they post their buy/sell prices and availability on their web site too.
They are postal only but a number of people on this site have posted that they have used this company with success.

JB9302

Just used www.coininvestdirect.com for the 1st time , did a test purchase for some Silver Maple Leaf coins , paid money in to their account on Tues and coins arrived 12.30pm today direct from Germany via UPS .

MrAnalogy

With regard to coinsinvestdirect, was there any problem in paying in to their account from an online current account please? (i.e. is the target account in the UK or Germany, as my account will not permit me to pay invoices abroad?)

I realise that it is probably far too late to be investing in gold, but am purely viewing it as a small hedge against the very worst outcomes - and anyway it will make a nice little bequest for children and grand-children if it all turns out well in the end.

Best regards

JB9302

The bank a/c was in the UK , did online transaction , no probs .

JB9302

Thanks for seeing the spelling error , now corrected

Hanks6

coininvest is a great service. prices are cheaper than uk bullion dealers due to the german sourcing i think - they have a LOT of gold over in germany.

irish_eyes_3

i have read this thread in full and what i gather is it is best to buy 1oz gold coins such as uk brittania's.

Am i right?

nrsql

irish_eyes wrote: »

i have read this thread in full and what i gather is it is best to buy 1oz gold coins such as uk brittania's.

Am i right?

http://www.taxfreegold.co.uk/sellingwhichcoinsorbars.html
http://www.taxfreegold.co.uk/coinsorbars.html
http://www.taxfreegold.co.uk/olderbullioncoins.html

I would go for brittanias (or other 1 ounce).
It's also nice to keep a few sovereigns.

Look out for offers from londonmintoffice (nothing to do with the london mint). A bit of a scam company but I recently picked up a sovereign from them for £119. Emailed back to request they don't send further offers or items and it seems to have worked so far.
It was a loss leader and they would send others on approval if you diodn't cancel.

sabretoothtigger

Can someone give me the symbol for gold in sterling, I presume there is one. I just want to see its price independent of the dollar