Okay, So I Am Thinking about Buying US Gold Coins

[Yavin4]

Where can I store them? A bank deposit box? maybe buy a small safe?

[fascisthunter]

1. bank deposit or a safe

I buy silver and have it all locked up in a safe.

[barb162]

48. I'd put it in a safety deposit box at a bank

That's a lot cheaper than buying a good safe.

[brooklynite]

2. Why hold the actual metal?

You can buy a mutual fund that holds them for you.

Unless you're arguing that you don't trust the investment firms; in which case I think Glenn Beck will have something for you to buy...

[Yavin4]

6. No, Thank You.

I really do not trust another party to hold my gold.

I'm going to buy it directly from the U.S. mint.

[Po_d Mainiac]

25. smart...hold the hard

But buy bullion from one of the mint's registered dealers. Why pay a premium for packaging for the issues sold from the mint?

On 15 coins you're going to drop an extra $4500 that wood be better spent on 2.75 additional coins. (1/10 and 1/2 ounce issues are available)

[Yavin4]

31. Your Post Title - Hey, That's What She Said

Sorry, you gave me a Michael Scott fastball down the middle.

[eridani]

45. Aren't there more gold certificates out there than there is actual gold in the world?

A coin has numismatic value as well as gold content value.

[the other one]

3. A safe that can't be stolen.

One that you can have bolted to a concrete floor.

Or bury it in the ground, or some safe hiding place.

But not at the bank or anywhere that you can't access at will.

If you can't store it you shouldn't buy it.

[WheelWalker]

4. A man, traveling across a field, encountered a tiger...

He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.

Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!

[damntexdem]

5. Is there a three-dollar coin -- with Reagan's picture?

How about a half-dollar with Palin's?

;-)

[Art_from_Ark]

8. There is a $3 dollar coin

But it depicts an Indian princess and was last minted in 1889.

[trusty elf]

18. How about these?

[ChrisBorg]

7. I use a small fireproof safe concealed in a false piece of ductwork in the basement.

My address is ..... !

[Art_from_Ark]

9. What kind of US gold coins are you thinking of buying?

[Yavin4]

10. American Gold Eagle 1 oz Coins

Thinking getting 15 of them.

[Art_from_Ark]

12. I hope you can get a good deal on them

Gold was down to the $1480s for a while but has recently rebounded back to the $1530 level.

That means that if you buy your eagles from APMEX, you'll be paying about $1616 each for them right now, more if you pay by credit card.

A place called Only Gold offers a little better price for 10 or more ($1611 each), with a buy price of $1543, meaning you're working on a spread of $67 dollars per coin. I've never dealt with either company, however, so I can't make a personal recommendation.

There are also dealers in Coin World and Numismatic News that buy and sell eagles, and they are bound by the advertising rules set by those publications. Or maybe your local dealer offers a better spread?

15 coins would be about the size of 15 half dollars. You could conceivably keep them in some innocuous-looking place in your home, as long as you don't advertise the fact that you have them. If you keep them at home (although it's not really advisable, especially if you live in a high-crime area), don't put them all together, and by all means remember where you put them. There was an article about the recent Joplin tornado that tore up an attic in someone's home, and coins that had been stashed in the attic by the previous owner started falling down on the living room!

Of course, a safety-deposit box is the easiest way to prevent theft, but access may be a problem under certain circumstances.

[Yavin4]

13. I Am Going to Buy Them Directly from the U.S. Mint

I am holding them for very long term investment value. I want an investment that stays ahead of real inflation.

[Art_from_Ark]

14. I didn't know that the Mint sold bullion coins directly to the public

In the past, the Mint would sell the basic bullion coins ("business strikes", not the collector versions) only to distributors. Has this changed?

On edit: I just checked the Mint's web site, and they still don't sell the strictly bullion (uncirculated) eagles directly to the public. The only bullion coins they sell directly to the public are the special version (proof) issues.

[Yavin4]

19. What's the Difference

between "the strictly bullion (uncirculated) eagles" and "the special version (proof) issues"?

[Art_from_Ark]

21. Strictly bullion coins are geared toward investors

The Mint refers to them as Uncirculated coins, and sometimes dealers will call them "business strikes". They have no special finish, and the Mint does not sell them directly to the general public.

Proof coins, on the other hand, are made with special dies and have a special mirror finish. The Mint sells them at a premium directly to collectors. Since the Mint's web site was down for maintenance when I checked, I can't say what the difference in price is right now between the uncirculated version purchased from a dealer, and the proof version purchased from the Mint.

[Po_d Mainiac]

24. They have gold Eagles..Business strikes

But encapsulated and in a nice box @ $1775+/-
http://catalog.usmint.gov/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10001&storeId=10001&productId=16260&langId=-1&parent_category_rn=13238

I'll take the ones from a roll for $130 less thank you.

[Art_from_Ark]

27. I guess that's why their web site was partially offline

So now they are offering Uncirculated bullion coins to collectors, in special collector editions, and at special collector prices.

If there isn't much demand for these special W mintmarked coins in the beginning, they could be worth something extra down the line. Who knows?

[roamer65]

30. I like the 2009 Ultra-High Relief Saint-Gaudens $20.

But only around 112,000 were made so they are getting harder to find.

[beanwire]

11. Wait for the shiny bubble

to burst, then pick them off the ground.

Try investing in rare earth metals.

[bpiet2000]

22. I can't belive nobody sees this...

...as the next bubble to burst.

[Po_d Mainiac]

23. Because some of see the USD as a bubble

And we heard the bubble talk when Au/Ag was at $950/$18.

[Art_from_Ark]

29. Heck, we were hearing "bubble talk" when gold was $500

To hear some people talk, Glenn Beck's the only one making the market for it so it must be a "bubble", dontcha know?

[sendero]

44. Because it is not.

... a bubble. It's price is a reflection of the devaluation of the dollar. And the dollar is going to continue to lose value, and hence gold will continue to rise in dollar terms.

[jtuck004]

15. Why? Investment? TEOTWAWKI? Just curious... n/t

[Art_from_Ark]

16. Long-term investment that keeps ahead of inflation,

not a doomsday scenario, according to Yavin's post #13.

[jtuck004]

17. Oh, thanks. didn't see that. n/t

[Yavin4]

20. Precisely

I want a long term investment that either keeps pace with real inflation or appreciates ahead of real inflation.

By "real inflation", I don't mean the watered down official CPI inflation. I mean throw in health care, energy, and housing into the inflation rate.

In a true doomsday scenario, the military would impose martial law and confiscate everyone's gold.

[Po_d Mainiac]

26. and keeps pace with WTI

How u doin?

[Art_from_Ark]

28. It's been tough going recently

Even though I didn't suffer any physical damage from them, the multiple disasters have had quite a few indirect adverse effects.

[golfguru]

32. Just a note of caution before you buy gold

Gold has to reach $2300 /oz to equal it's previous bubble high reached in late 1970's inflation adjusted.

No one knows how high gold will go from here. If inflation comes back it can go higher. If economy tanks further and we enter depression like conditions, gold could drop significantly.

Looking at past history, gold is a good long term investment when purchased at discount from previous high's.

[Art_from_Ark]

33. The economy has already been tanking for a while

but gold has been climbing. It's not just a US market-- it's global. Despite the poor economy, there's a lot of cash floating around out that is looking for a place to park, and bonds, securities, CDs, etc., have been becoming less attractive.

As for the previous "inflation-adjusted high", which was just a short-lived blip in January 1980, the big-time buyers really aren't paying attention to that. Too many things have changed in the last 30 years to make that a meaningful statistic.

[golfguru]

34. As you say there is a lot of cash floating around with

no place to go. That is classic formula for creating a bubble. Remember the housing bubble? People were quite willing to pay ever inflating prices even if they could not afford it?

And nah, laws of economics never change. Only the players and faces change. The problem with bubbles is no one can predict when it will burst. Gold could double from here and it would not surprise me. And then like all the bubbles of past it will burst without warning.

Food, water & electricity will never go out of demand. Because we can't live without them. Gold? Haaaaaah!

[Art_from_Ark]

35. The housing bubble is not an appropriate comparison

It was mainly limited to the US, and houses can be made in essentially unlimited numbers. Also, houses are expensive, usually require mortgages, are almost all purchased by individuals, do not have "fungible" values, cannot be easily transported to another location, are often difficult to sell, and can be beset with any number of problems that can severely decrease their value.

Gold, on the other hand, has been considered a monetary medium since the emergence of Western civilization. It represents significant value even in small amounts, is "fungible" in that its value in bullion form can easily be calculated based on a world market price, is easily transported, is bought by individuals, organizations, even governments around the world as a store of wealth, is easy to store, does not require maintenance and is not subject to property taxes.

Maybe food, water, and electricity will never go out of demand, but you cannot store those things indefinitely. You can probably grow some of your own food, and maybe produce some of your own electricity, but almost no one can provide their own, independent, safe supply of water. So for all practical purposes, the vast majority of the population is heavily dependent on others to provide these basic necessities. The acquisition of these necessities almost always requires money. And, barring some earth-shattering discovery by a modern-day alchemist, gold will always be considered a monetary medium.

[golfguru]

36. Agreed that gold has value

but over the last 50 years, a whole bunch of more money would have been made in other investments such as stocks and housing.

In the end, timing is everything. You can make money in a lot of things and lose money in almost anything if your timing is bad.

As for housing bubble, Japan had the biggest bubble ever.
Real estate in Tokyo was simply out of sight. Japan has never really recovered once that bubble burst.

Another place I know of housing bubble was UK. That bubble has also been pricked.

Currently China has a pretty good housing bubble brewing especially in Beijing & Shanghai. That bubble may be popping.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304906004576367121835831168.html


India is another country with a significant housing bubble at this time but not as big as China. These are big countries and when the Chinese bubble is burst, everybody is going to feel it.

[Yavin4]

37. I Bought Gold As A Long Term Hedge Against Future Economic Collapses

I believe that our global economy is being run for the benefit of a very small number of people to the detriment of the masses, and given such a poor distribution of overall wealth, we will continue to have economic collapses.

The debt ceiling "crisis" will eventually fade away, but we still have a moribound economy and a Fed putting interest rates at 0%. In the last ten years or so, we've had interest rates above 2% for about 20 months or so? For the bulk of that time, interest rates have been 0% to 1%. The Fed has had to do this because our economy simply is not growing and allowing borrowing makes people believe that the economy is growing.

Yes, gold is a bad investment if the U.S. debt is declining, the dollar is strong, the economy grows at a reasonable rate, and interest rates are in the 4% to 5% range. None of those things are happening now.

[Art_from_Ark]

38. I don't buy that argument about stocks

What stocks would you have been investing in in 1961? Stocks, unlike gold and silver bullion, are not "fungible", that is, one stock is not like another. Some stocks have done well, others have been disasters. Assuming, then, that you bought a DOW index fund in 1961, how much would you have paid for it up front? How much would you have had to pay to maintain it? How much in taxes would you have had to pay on whatever interest you may have earned?

In 1961, the DOW reached a high of 728.8 on December 1. Today, it is 12,302. That represents an increase of nearly 17X. Not bad if you had bought a generic DOW fund at that time and sat on it until now.

Now let's look at silver. In 1961, you could go to the bank and get 90% silver coins for face value. Assuming that there are no special dates in that bunch, if you sold $728.80 face value of 90% silver coins today, you should be able to get at least $17,500 for them. In the meantime, you wouldn't have had to pay any taxes on them. Also, if you had bought silver dollars from the bank in 1961 with that same money, you could sell them for at least $21,000 today. Or, if you had bought .999 silver bullion for $1.00/ounce in 1961, you could sell it for approximately 37X that amount today.

Gold has also done very well since then. Assuming you took that $728.80 in 1961 and bought the most popular gold bullion coin at the time, the British sovereign, for roughly $11 each, you could have bought approximately 66 sovereigns (enough to fill a little more than 1 1/2 nickel rolls). Today, you can sell those sovereigns for roughly $370 each, or nearly $25,000 for the lot of 66 coins.

[Yavin4]

39. What Is The Inflation Adjusted Return on the DOW Since 1961?

Yes, 17x your initial investment sounds impressive until you factor in inflation. In 1961, you could buy an apartment on Park Avenue in NYC for $30,000. Today, that apartment would sell for $15 million easy.

[golfguru]

40. Gold & Silver have done very well at current prices

but if you go back 10 years ago prices, not so good.
Timing is everything in all investments. If you buy
gold or silver at current prices, you may not do as well
in 10 years as you might in stocks of home builders at the currently depressed levels. If you bought those precious metals at their previous peak in late 1970's you are not doing good at all.

I do not believe there is any investment vehicle where you can just buy and hold. Especially true for stocks.

[Art_from_Ark]

42. The previous peaks of precious metals occurred in January 1980

Early 1979 would actually have been a good time to buy silver and gold. I bought as much US 90% silver coins as I could afford (which wasn't much) for 3.5X to 4X face value in late 1978/early 1979, and sold most of that in late 1979/early 1980 for 13X to 16X face, and the remainder for 12X face value in 1981. I started getting back into 90% silver in 1987 or so at roughly 3.2X to 3.4X face value, and kept buying at that level for the rest of the decade. I could sell that silver for 7, maybe 8 times that price today (that is, at least 24X face value).

[pipoman]

46. I too like silver

and have for years. The difference between the 70's/early 80's silver price inflation and the current market is vast. The Hunt Brothers market manipulation scheme created a bubble. The current dramatic changes are driven by the actual market, devaluation of currency, and loss of faith in the US economic system. I don't believe silver is a bubble. I believe it is acting as it has historically, as a hedge against inflation. It may go down, and likely will, but it will come down as economic conditions improve, imo. Industrial demand has increased as China and other emerging economies. Some say there isn't enough silver in reserves to cover contracts coming due. If enough of those people choose to take delivery, this would have a serious impact too. OTOH, we witnessed the impact 1 person can make on these prices just 2 months ago with George Soros' sale of futures, and the ripple effects of that sale.

[Po_d Mainiac]

47. The same forces used to

crush Bunker H. have been tried multiple times in the last couple months to suppress Ag. Most notable, the increasing of margins by the Crimex and other exchanges.

Ag has recovered nicely in spite of the manipulations. There is also that little rumor that the SLV is shy the physical, with paper hedging the shortfall....Hmmm
YMMV

[golfguru]

41. I trade mutual funds, and not buy and hold!

At my age, individual stocks have a risk I do not want deal with. I typically buy and sell mutual funds using seasonality as my main timing tool. No complaints on returns considering the risk is small.

[Art_from_Ark]

43. Regarding Japan and the housing bubble

The housing bubble is not what has kept Japan in the economic doldrums for the last 20 years-- it has been a combination of factors, including the lack of interest on savings accounts resulting from the banking crisis (and a glut of savings), the maturation of the Japanese economy and the aging and stabilizing of the population, the limitations on consumerism imposed by Japan's geography and geology, and the pressures on its export-based economy in having to deal with a currency that has nearly doubled in value against the dollar since 1998!