Best way to invest 10K to 20K in gold or silver? (trading, income)

[smilinpretty]

I bought gold coins with Lear Capital, salesman talked me into it. I bought what I thought was $15K worth of coins, then I found out, I paid almost $5K in commission, which was not discussed with me the full amount of commision. This was when Gold was selling for $900 an ounce. I would have broken even at $15K. So, beware...watch the commission. The salesman screwed up my order and I talked to 3 people in the company, all of who lied to me. I finally got the owner to phone me and he gave me back my money in full. The advertise on Fox News.

[kenvbtx]

Texas Numismatic Association
American Numismatic Association

Fort Worth Coin Club, Inc.
FORT WORTH COIN CLUB SHOW LOCATION
Lockheed Martin Recreation Center
3400 Bryant Irvin Road - Ft. Worth, Texas

I think if you want to know more about this subject, attend a coin show. These guys will talk about it this stuff all day.


If you want to sell your gold, there are many places willing to buy them. Jewelry stores, coin dealers, pawn shops, etc. These guys always have cash on hand. If you ever stepped outside of the U.S. you know what I'm talking about.

[mortimer]

Originally Posted by HappyNewMe

how do people convert those coins, bullions,
etc. back into money when the time comes?

First of all, gold is money. The dollar, euro, etc. are currencies.

You can go into any coin store or gold store and "sell" ( convert ) them into dollars.

There is a gold exchange store in town where I go to buy and sell. I know what stuff
is worth and they don't overcharge. You have to just find a dealer that is honest and
just makes money on the buy/sell spread. I also know good coin dealers. When I lived
in the Phoenix area, there was another bullion dealer that was good.

The dealer will charge you about $30-50 per coin. You should never have to pay a commission.

If you buy a 1-ounce coin, that is about 2%. This is a lot more of a cost than buying 10 shares
of GLD - which is one tenth of an ounce of gold. For those that don't know, you can buy gold,
silver, platinum, palladium, oil ... as a share of stock. GLD is an ETF. It's not a dangerous
synthetic ETF, it's just a share of a bar of gold stored in a vault. Gold goes up, you make money -
or it goes down. <-yup. If you have a brokerage account, you can make the buy for less than $10.

Back to the gold dealer for coins:
--------------------------------
If you buy a 1/10th ounce coin and pay $190-200 then you are paying
a large premium over the price of gold. Note that if you later sell it, you
will sell it for more than the price because the smaller coins are more
expensive per ounce. A 1/10th ounce coins is about the size of a dime.

People buying gold are doing it to protect a part of their net worth from
a huge drop in the value of currencies - all of them. You could do this
by buying a ship and storing petroleum on it or buying a whole bunch of
iron and putting it in a warehouse. You could even do this with grain.

Gold is just more compact and has been accepted for longer than there has been civilization.

Regarding using gold to buy food if civlization collapses - well good luck with that.
If someone has some food and has more than they can consume before it goes
bad, then they might sell some to you for gold which does not go bad.

That is how gold became money. It was compact. It was accepted. You could
sell something for gold ( money ) and later on ( years later ) use that gold to
buy some other thing. That is what money is. Even back in the days of the Roman
Empire governments debased their currencies, but gold never lost its value.

If civilization collapses - which is what a lot of gold nuts want - then no amount of gold, guns,
or food will save you if someone finds you with it. Sorry. Gold can only go so far. Back when
it was backing the dollar ( the dollar was "good as gold" ) people stole other people's gold.

I like gold, but I also have shares of Chevron and Verizon that pay me dividends. Gold doesn't.

[Ishouldknow]

I'm neither pro or anti gold. I've traded commodities since the 70's was a successful broker in the 80s and the 90s. You NEVER stand in front of a freight train. Those who think gold is a bad "Investment" have you shorted it?

[UrbanAdventurer]

silver is the one that always gets overlooked. I imagine plenty of long term investors have (quietly) made a tidy little return if they've been holding any since the days when it traded for less than 10 bucks an ounce (I wish I'd been old enough then to have bought a ton of it). It's still undervalued though is what my hunch is.

[marcopolo]

Originally Posted by unseengundam

I am wondering what would be best method to invest between $10K to $20k into gold and/or silver? How easy is it to get about doing so?

Thanks in advance for any info!

PLEASE read this first:

Warren Buffett: Why stocks beat gold and bonds - The Term Sheet: Fortune's deals blog Term Sheet

[TechGromit]

Originally Posted by mortimer

That is one reason that people find gold to be desirable.
It is portable wealth. It's not as portable as diamonds, but more portable than silver.
... Those things have absolutely NO intrinsic value, but a diamond that can fit under the cap of a soda bottle might be worth more than $1 million.

I think diamonds are the worst possible investment you can possibly make. I just saw a commercial on TV for investing in diamonds and I'm shocked anyone would even consider it an investment.

1 oz of gold has a set market price, no matter who values it they would agree it's 1 oz of gold, and gold has a set market value.

A diamond on the other hand has to be graded by an expert, one expert might say a 10k diamond is worth 8k and another say 12k. There a great deal of opinion when grading the quality of diamonds.

I always seen movies about people who are carrying a small pursue full of diamonds, the argument is they are small, portable, valuable and easily exchangeable. The first two might be correct, the the last two are not.

First off no diamond store goes out and buys a million dollars in diamonds. They go to distributors and sell the on consignment. They put very little of there own money up front, they get diamonds, make jewelry and once the jewelery sells, they pay for the diamonds.

And two, there's a HUGE markup on diamonds. at least 1000%. If you were to walk into a jewelry store with 10 million dollars in diamonds, they are only paying 10 cents on the dollar for diamonds they get legally, why would they pay you anything close to that? I wager you get lucky to cash in 10 million dollars of stolen diamonds for no more than 400k and at considerable risk.

[mortimer]

Originally Posted by TechGromit

I think diamonds are the worst possible investment you can possibly make.

The worst? The very worst? ... You aren't trying very hard.

Otherwise, your post is entirely correct unless one is looking to invest 8-figures, of course.

Diamonds are probably a better way to smuggle money than gold.
A metal detector won't find it. $1 million in gold would fit in a showbox,
but would weigh as much as a small person. You could swallow $1 million
in diamonds and cross a border without your wealth being detected.

Aside from a slight unpleasantry recovering your diamonds, you're good to go on the other side.

Of course, that's not the topic of this thread.

[marcopolo]

Originally Posted by unseengundam

I am wondering what would be best method to invest between $10K to $20k into gold and/or silver? How easy is it to get about doing so?

Thanks in advance for any info!

Right now, the best way to invest $20k into gold and/or silver is to put $40k in and just wait.

[legoman]

Be wary buying the ETFs like GLD or SLV. Read the fine print. They don't actually need to have the physical gold/silver they say they do. If it comes right down to it and the prices go ballistic, they can settle with you in worthless fiat dollars and you have lost what you thought was a physical investment.

Better to invest in the Sprott physical gold or silver funds.

Or even better just buy some physical silver coins. They are extremely undervalued compared to gold.