Buying gold for a "normal" person

Gold Bullion but it goes up and it goes down like everything else...........just depends when the time comes to sell it.

Forget jewellery you pay for the manufacturing process but when sold it is only worth the gold weight.

Don't forget people selling it want the current going rate so there's very little chance of that magic deal.

Wish I had bought bull last year when it was at 750......s*1t

"gold" costs much the same wherever you buy it. There are no special deals in the middle east

tim

Yes, but some companies will sell it nearer the actual "cost" price than others, and looking on google doesn`t exactly help unless you`ve got a stupid amount of money to spend :-)

Way back when Marconni almost went bust I nearly bought a few grands worth of shares as a punt. If I`d bought them I`d not be working now :-)

But anecdotally it`s easier to buy is small bars, coins etc. Can you suggest anyone/anywhere in the UK to buy smallish amounts at a reasonable markup?

only if its hooky gold.............

Googling for gold bullion traders produces a useful lot of results for you. You can even buy by post. Current price £822 per ounce by post. Others are less.

Rob Graham

I thought the reason that everyone is advertising to buy your old jewellery is that gold prices are currently very high!

I suspect gold is difficult to insure.

Harrods did over the counter basrs, don't know if they still do. Google 'harrods gold'

I have an impression that smallish (c. 1 OZ.) bars are used as wedding gifts at indian weddings. You might find that jewellers in areas with lots of people of indian descent would be a place to start.

I prefer to think of precious metals as insurance rather than an investment. But either way, this lot are very reliable, and fairly priced...

"5 Andrew McP

PS One of my colleagues at work appears to be getting gold from his dentist and storing it in his mouth. It's not something I'd recommend, as I think dentists' margins are pretty high. ;-)

The margins those people work on are pretty high, and demand for physical metal remains strong, apparently. Gold as an investment, or insurance has been unfashionable for quite a while now (since WW2?), so if only a small %age of people dip their toe in -- as they have in recent years -- it has quite a big effect on a small market.... though I think the big investors playing with the ETFs has more effect now.

The potential is obviously there for a bubble. But the more you look at the crazy financial world we live in (a world which relies on a big bouncy castle of debt to stop it crashing to the ground), the easier it is to develop a nervous twitch and reach for a little solid reassurance.

The advantage of gold is that it's not hard to hide, and you don't have to worry about rats eating it. :-) And if you have so much that you have to worry about storage, then you probably have enough money to put it somewhere properly safe.

To avoid this, many people use services like

which is well respected. For small amounts it's not very cost effective though. Andrew McP

Unless you want to look at it, why not deal or bet on the future price ?

Interesting article by Peter Tasker in a recent FT explored that very point. The author points out that much of the current price of gold is due to speculation, and that gold is subject to the same boom-and- bust cycles as some other assets.

Here is part of the author's argument:

"The inconvenient truth is that gold is not really an investment at all. Since it generates no return and thus has no fundamental value, the same arguments can be used to justify any price ? $500 an ounce or $5,000. Gold buyers are simply trusting in the bigger fool theory ? that someone else will take it off their hands at a higher price. They are speculating, not investing, and like all speculators what they are speculating on is the speculations of other speculators. Packaging it in an exchange-traded fund makes no difference. "

[Financial Times, 4th August 2010]

It's behind the FT firewall, but you can still find it by googling for

"Yen has edge over gold in battle for supremacy"

That debate is fair enough, and a good reason why gold was languishing at $200ish an ounce a decade ago. And I am certainly not going to defend gold as some kind of "miracle asset".

However for some reason -- beauty, immutability, density, rarity, or whatever -- it has had some financial power throughout the whole of human history. Whether real, mythical, mystical, or purely delusional, that power exists in some form. Central banks still seem to think so, even if Gordon Brown didn't, and who am I to argue with them?

Ultimately we all have to make our own choices when it comes to preserving what wealth we've managed to accumulate. But it has never hurt to diversify. The only question is when you dip your toe into the various asset classes.

Buying a few coins at the wrong time won't hurt you. But buying a house at the wrong stage in the cycle will enslave you for 25+ years. Every asset class has its risks (though I do wish property wasn't considered an asset... I long for a world where everyone has a very basic housing entitlement).

Andrew McP

PS One thing which helped change my mind about gold was when I realised that most "normal" people do have some precious metals in the form of jewellery. That was traditionally one of the ways people saved... in items you kept with you at all times. In fact I was the exception among my working class peers in that I had no precious metals whatsoever. Even if they only had a silver St. Christopher, a sovereign ring, wedding ring, or small number of pre-war sovereigns from their grandparents, it's surprising how many people have something, even if the family silver long since went to the smelter. :-)

Ultimately it`s there as a potential investment and insurance against everything going a bit pear shaped - gold has always been of value no matter how bad things have been, so having a relatively small amount can come in handy. Plus it`s nice to look at ;-)

In message , Andrew MacPherson wrote

But is it worth anything? Isn't most of the gold classified as 9 "ratners" rather than 9 carat and the stones as worthless rocks from QVC?

Why not open a trading account with a low cost broker (selftrade.co.uk springs to mind), and then buy gold "shares".

Have a look on google finance for the latest price for PHAU

This is an ETF, which lets you buy physical gold in 1/10 oz shares.

Big advantage is theres no need to hold the gold yourself while you go travelling.

No good if you like the bling though!