cheapest place to buy precious metals?

[Aleta]

I would agree with 97 guns. We had gold shares on paper and unless you know what you are doing you can lose it. We didn't know very much about it and those people are trading your shares all the time. I would prefer having the real stuff in my hands.

[QuarterMillionMan]

Apmex, bullion direct, straight silver, silver towne, kitco, Northwest Territorial mint, etc. Some places charge a higher premium than others, so shop around. I dollar cost average my purchases over time whenever I can afford more. I prefer purchasing smaller increments say, (31) 1 gram bars vs (1) one ounce bar. I realize that I'm subjected to paying higher premiums (actually I get taken thru the wringer) but I like knowing it's more easily divisible in smaller increments.

[Nika]

Those of you who know, which one would you recommend? I'm not really thinking of it as a part of porfolio on any kind of scale, but I think it might be fun to own one gold bullion. How can I get ripped of the least while buying one?

And does it matter which mint? Is credit suisse bullion considered better than say Perth or whatever?

[97guns]

goldmart.com has the best pricing out there

[amarowsky]

Best deals you will find are on Craig's list or eBay. They usually sell at spot price . to combat buying fakes look for well known silver or gold such as englehard or american silver eagle coins.

Best option depending on location would probably be a coin dealer, if you are paying between 1-3 dollars over spot and ounce then it's as good a deal as I've seen for silver.

Buy from an online dealer like kitco.com you can probably get a slightly lower price over spot but I find you lose any savings in shipping costs.

I recently got into buying silver and it's been interesting and I can see the benefits of it and I feel they are with it for a small portion of my savings investments

[KTP]

I found a local dealer who is selling junk silver at about 22 times face value, which is only $0.50 or so over spot. Mecury dimes are so pretty too!

[jasonbinary]

I read this post a while back and have been buying some gold and silver for some time. I found a couple good sites you can use as well.

goldshark.com is a cost comparison shopping site for online dealers. You can put in a mock order and they show you the cheapest price including shipping and insurance ( which is really a big deal as it gets expensive.

golddealerreviews.com is a site where people leave feedback about dealers they have bought from in the past, take it for what its worth.

coindealers.org is a great way to find local coin dealers. They have like 3,500 coin shops in the system. Simply put in your zip and do a search.

Hope this helps.

[~bs]

The best place to buy gold/coins is from your local coin dealer/rare metals dealer who has been around for years. They will be more likely to buy/sell at market rates rather than investor rates. Do your homework as a lot of those nationally advertised companies have some pretty incredible mark-ups. If you are going to keep gold around for later bartering, make sure you have it in barter-able units - if an ounce of gold is worth $1000, how much food is that?

That depends... If you're subject to a sales tax, it's going to be much cheaper to buy from a large online dealer. Many of the companies are rip off artists, but the ones listed on this thread are not.

[~bs]

apmex, gainsville or provident

nice to see some interest in physical metal.

I'd add bulliondirect

They operate a bullion exchange (similar to a stock market exchange) and basically act as a clearinghouse for buyers and sellers of physical metal.

Also, I'd recommend sticking with well known dealers, at least at first while you get your feet wet. And over time learn how to spot fakes and counterfeits.

[mrpaseo]

Kitco

[mrpaseo]

I put this together on another site, here is a list of places to purchase PMs.

Look here

[amarowsky]

I called my usual store that sells silver and they are totally out :/ they said they would order some for me and lock in the price of spot at the time of order, but they said because it was so difficult for them to get and order that they wanted like 5$ per ounce over spot. And I just can't agree to pay that, it is way too much.

I have a feeling that this huge fluctuation is going to cause Silver/gold to sky rocket in the up coming months, due to over compensating this dip in price.