Quote:
Originally Posted by sengsational
Just for fun, I looked-up the spreads on pre-1965 US coins. Kitco appears to be selling for 14% above the price of the contained silver, and buying for 10% below the price of contained silver. If you add-in shipping cost, they're selling for 17% above. Their shipping charge is $30 for a 5 lb package, plus insurance, so that's a money maker for them, I'm sure.
Anyway, as I suspected, those monster spreads are still there. That has always kept me away from doing anything with PM. I only looked at Kitco because I'd done some research there for someone else.
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FWIW, with .9999 gold coins, you can buy them for as low as $29 over spot and sell them back at spot to APMEX - around a 2% spread (specifically Canadian Maple Leaf gold coins.) Gold Buffalo coins earn $10 over spot, but they cost at least $10 more. A more typical street markup is $45 per coin, which is still only a 3.5%-ish spread. American Gold Eagles aren't quoted online to sell back, I assume because they are 'only' .9167 pure. From what I understand about the TV gold, they sell numismatic gold at highly inflated prices to people who are not collectors and should be buying bullion at a few dollars over spot for their EOTW fund.
For Silver, one particular APMEX silver coin sells for $18.91-$19.91 based on quantity, and are repurchased for $16.82 which is $.80 over the live spot Bid price! (Specifically 1 oz. Great Britain Silver Britannia) - about 13-15% total spread - not bad considering the current spot price. I think it's a matter of shopping carefully for the right products and watching the price over spot. It varies by product a lot, changes from time to time, and some bullion coins even accrue a small numismatic value as they age.
(FWIW, the prices I'm quoting will change in real time online as the spot changes, so they won't match anything you see now, but the spreads should be similar)