First gold bullion purchase

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escobar

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Hey thanks for all the great info here. I have made my first order for gold bullion on the internet. Bought it at Tulving co. Read all the reviews online. In general people speak highly of it. The guy is not a saleman but I kinda like that.

Dont know if I am being paranoid but how can i be sure things are not fake. I have seen some videos on you tube with people using tungsten etc so appears very well done fakes may be hard to detect. But was just curious what your thought were. If they are packaged and from a well known mint how much should I be worrying?

Thanks
 
Did you buy American Eagles? I wouldn't worry too much if you did.

Congrats on your first purchase. :clap:
 
no bought bullion bars from perth mint australia. for me its an investment i dont really need the coin format. plus with all the crazy conspiracy theories i actually felt safer with a brand of gold from another country. plus i felt like if someome were to counterfit someting they would try to do it with something that is very common.
 
thanks. any scales you guys recomend to spot check the stuff? do you guys typically weigh it to verify its gold(although its really weight and volume) but better than nothing.

thanks
 
Congrats on your first purchase. A lot of the products from Perth Mint come sealed in an assay card, so if that's the case you probably don't have to test it. But congrats again and as Mike Maloney said you must diversify, buy gold AND silver, lol.
 
thanks

thanks i will continue to pos all i learn. just new to the game so getting familar with stuff. last thing i want to do it do all the research and then get stuff with bad stuff.

yes i plan on buying silver as well. the thing is at least on the website i am using most of the silver bullion is not wrapped nice as the perth mint gold ones. i checked a lot of places and seems to be pretty consistent across. makes me more nervous. i was going to buy 100oz bars but now think will just do the 10oz because perhaps less chance of fakes in smaller sizes.
 
Escobar,
As you buy silver, you may want to consider diversifying among:
silver bars
American silver eagles
silver rounds
90% silver dimes, quarters, half dollars
Etc.
 
I definitely agree with unobtainium on this one. There are different uses for the various forms, it's good to have some of each for certain. Consider all the cases where you might be having to use it for something - a big pure block might be good for a major trade with a trusted partner (it would rarely come out even, someone would owe someone a favor), whilst some people you'd not want to have know you had anything like that, but you need a little coin to make a small deal for something important, but smaller.
 
Actually, to a small degree I have a different take. I stick (almost 100%) to the American Eagles, both in silver and gold. I like them because they are STANDARD, in the sense that they are best recognized and they stack well into the US Mint plastic tubes.

A tube of (20) Gold Eagles is almost enough for a "big purchase" (land, machinery, etc.). 5 tubes would equal a 100 oz bar.

A single Silver Eagle will (say) buy a decent load of groceries.

I DO recognize that having "small" silver (dimes, quarters or fractional Silver Eagles <--- do they make fractional Silver Eagles?) for small everyday purchases (say a case of beer..., LOL) would be good. I have not yet acted on this one yet.

I do have a few 1/10 oz Gold Eagles, as they are "halfway", if you will, between a Gold Eagle and a Silver Eagle.

---

And just in case everything turns out great? That the Green Shoots really do portend a resurgent economy and that we will live happily ever after? That is why I own platinum too. Platinum is for optimists... Increased economic activity means more demand for platinum (as a catalyst).

Diversification means that you have to account for "White Swans" (the good ones) too!
 
thanks for all the advice. any suggestions for online bullion dealers w decent prices?

thanks

chris
 
DoChenRollingBearing said:
Actually, to a small degree I have a different take. I stick (almost 100%) to the American Eagles, both in silver and gold. I like them because they are STANDARD, in the sense that they are best recognized and they stack well into the US Mint plastic tubes.

A tube of (20) Gold Eagles is almost enough for a "big purchase" (land, machinery, etc.). 5 tubes would equal a 100 oz bar.

A single Silver Eagle will (say) buy a decent load of groceries.

I DO recognize that having "small" silver (dimes, quarters or fractional Silver Eagles <--- do they make fractional Silver Eagles?) for small everyday purchases (say a case of beer..., LOL) would be good. I have not yet acted on this one yet.

I do have a few 1/10 oz Gold Eagles, as they are "halfway", if you will, between a Gold Eagle and a Silver Eagle.

---

And just in case everything turns out great? That the Green Shoots really do portend a resurgent economy and that we will live happily ever after? That is why I own platinum too. Platinum is for optimists... Increased economic activity means more demand for platinum (as a catalyst).

Diversification means that you have to account for "White Swans" (the good ones) too!
Click to expand...

While I would still be completely happy if I only had ASE's as DCRB mentions, I am a still a tad happier with some diversification in silver :cheers: It really is hard to go wrong as long as you have some silver and some gold, in whatever format.

For escobar's benefit, here are some bits of info about various types of silver. Please feel free to add info to the list or make corrections if you see any errors below.

Bars - 0.999 silver, low premiums, easiest to counterfeit (?), various sizes, 1 oz, 10 oz, etc.

ASE's - 0.999 silver, higher premiums, very well known, very liquid

90% silver US dimes, quarters, half dollars - 0.90 silver, low premiums (sometimes even below spot), hard to counterfeit, or perhaps not worth the effort to counterfeit (?). Usually sold by the face value. For example $1000 face value of 90% silver contains approx 715 oz of silver. Also referred to as Pre-1965 coins and also "junk silver", but there is nothing junk about these coins.

Generic silver rounds - 0.999 silver, low premiums (for example Buffalo rounds).

Foreign coins (Canadian maple leaf, Austrian philharmonic, etc) - 0.999 silver


There are also 40% silver US coins, but I don't care for those too much.

Oh and stay way from Nickel silver, also known as German silver which is a copper alloy with nickel and often zinc. The usual formulation is 60% copper, 20% nickel and 20% zinc.
 
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thanks for all the info. just bought some 10oz credit suisse gold bars. can anyone find an original website that lists the dimensions so i can check and verify when i get them. i searched all over and found stuff from other dealers but not been able to find an original source. for example on the perth mint ones i went directly to the perth mint website where it lists all the stats clearly.

thanks
 
Unobtanium said:

"90% silver US dimes, quarters, half dollars - 0.90 silver, low premiums (sometimes even below spot), hard to counterfit, or perhaps not worth the effort to counterfit (?). Usually sold by the face value. For example $1000 face value of 90% silver contains approx 715 oz of silver. Also refered to as Pre-1965 coins and also "junk silver", but there is nothing junk about these coins."

Let's see if I did this quote thing right... Nope, I did not.

---

I think that the risk of counterfeiting IS very low with the 90% silver dimes and quarters. I also believe that silver and lead have about the same density, but lead cannot "hold a strike" and would fail the "ring test" (drop it on something hard).
 
escobar said:
thanks for all the info. just bought some 10oz credit suisse gold bars. can anyone find an original website that lists the dimensions so i can check and verify when i get them. i searched all over and found stuff from other dealers but not been able to find an original source. ...
Click to expand...

I found this:
...
Another recognized hallmark for gold bars is Credit Suisse, the huge Swiss bank. Credit Suisse bars are manufactured by PAMP. (A few years ago, Credit Suisse bought First Boston Bank to gain a major foothold in the U.S. banking market.)
...
Click to expand...

http://www.cmi-gold-silver.com/buy-gold-bullion-bars.html

PAMP has a .PDF catalogue listing the dimensions for the PAMP suisse bars (see page 13):

http://www.pamp.com/images/catalog.pdf

I would suggest contacting Credit Suisse directly (or Pamp Suisse) and ask them.

https://www.credit-suisse.com/us/en/
 
I called Credit Suisse in switzerland and got some guy in the precious metal dept. He told me to email him my question. So i did then he said contact my relationship manager with the bank. I told him I am not a client but I just bought some bars with your banks name on it and wanted to verify the dimensions. So far no luck. Don't know why its so difficult. I then went to the website of the assayer but have not been able to get any info there as well.

http://www.valcambi.com

I am next going to try to some dealers here in the US and see what they say. Personally I don't like to take someone elses view as fact and prefer the source document.

Will let you know what I find.

Oh had a question as it relates to testing weight on packaged bars and coins. Obviously the packaging weighs something so how do you deal with that? In one sense I feel more confident if the coin or bar is packaged because seems like would be harder fabricate, but on the other hand makes it harder to get exact weight and dimensions.

Thank you very much!
 
Seems to me you either trust the packaging or you don't.
 
Just again to ease your worries, all the companies I see selling 10 oz gold bars say that they come with an assay certificate.

10 oz CS Gold Bar
Specifications
Gold Content 10.0000 oz
Total Weight 10.000 oz
Purity 99.99%
Country Switzerland
Length 60mm
Width 35mm
Thickness 8mm
Click to expand...

I know the website doesn't look very reputable compared to others but it was one of the only ones that had spec's.

http://www.bostonbullion.com/productdetail.bb?GOLDBAR10OZ
 
Yes thank you very much. I saw that site as well. Just so odd how hard it has been to find the stats. I actually spent a half and hr on the phone trying to call various people at CS in Switzerland with no success. Most other mints seem to list their dimensions very clearly.

Will report back when i find something.

Thank you.
 
I might suggest sending an email to PAMP suisse and ask them if they are minting the credit suisse bars (and if so, the specs).
 
That's an awesome resource. Thanks for digging and thanks for sharing. BTW - you can right click on their PDF files and save them to your local hard drive.
 
I noticed people talking about verifying gold bars and I thought I'd give some advice on verifying silver bars. First, get yourself a serious magnet ( a rare earth magnet) and then hold your bar at a 45 degree angle and put the magnet at the high end of the bar. The magnet will slowly slide down the bar. Try this with something non-magnetic to see the difference. The magnet will have a noticeable delay as it slides down the bar.

Bet you didn't know that silver was partially magnetic. Anyway, give it a try. But you have to use a real magnet (not a crappy fridge magnet).

Here's a video on it.



Cheers
 
Gold discount 20%

i recently brought 658 oz at 20% lower than the 2nd close on the london bullion market and i am getting it delivered in the next few months what is your thought it worked out to about £844 per oz :noevil:
 
twiceisnice said:
i recently brought 658 oz at 20% lower than the 2nd close on the london bullion market and i am getting it delivered in the next few months what is your thought it worked out to about £844 per oz :noevil:
Click to expand...

Hi twiceisnice

I would advise you remove the number of ounces of gold you purchased from your post and be as vague as you can about how much and where it might be in all future posts :noevil:

Otherwise welcome aboard :cheers:

and no im not a bit upset that you have a very nice size holding :pffftt:
possibly a bit puzzled that you bought so much in one purchase and got such a big discount ...........
 
There was a question a while back about scales...

I use MyWeight Palm Scales for gold and silver checking / buying / junk, etc.

Check out:

http://www.oldwillknottscales.com/buy-my-weigh-scales.html

and be sure to buy something that measures to the right decimal place!!

See:

http://www.oldwillknottscales.com/scales-by-capacity-and-resolution.html

Although, some fakes measure right where they should be. I would think you are safe with Perth mint items. However, you will probably buy more things in the future and a scale is indispensable, IMHO.

ADK
 
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