Has anyone ever bought gold bullion from the Royal Mint as an investment?

A mate of mine was discussing it last night, on about getting some for his kids rather than a savings plan.

https://www.royalmintbullion.com/Products/Bars

Watching with interest.

d’you know anything about investing in gold?*
It’s not like an ISA, it’s a commodity (prices vary massively…)

*not being arsey, but I’d want to be very clear about what I was investing in

Nope, I know nothing about it.

From a quick scan of the FAQ’s you can buy and store yourself and sell if needed when the price is high or you can invest as a pension but it has o be stored at the Mint.

If I ever considered it I’d get some advice.

Be careful of buying bars, as they attract CGT.

You *might* be better off buying UK coins as they are treated as legal tender and don’t.

http://www.atsbullion.com/investment-guides/

No but I did once buy a big bunch of gold coins as an investment – quite funny picking them up from a dealer and walking with my biggest friend to the bank where I put them in a safe deposit box.

and how did this “investment” perform?

I’ve done it a few times with 99.99% chinese gold in ounce and two ounce bars – made some beer money

Be careful of buying bars, as they attract CGT.

You *might* be better off buying UK coins as they are treated as legal tender and don’t.

http://www.atsbullion.com/investment-guides/

Great link, thanks for that. Watched the video but will read a bit moe into it later.

If you want to invest in gold, buy an ETF.

Yes.

Bought some in 2007 or so, kept a gold bar in the loft hidden in the Christmas decs, spend several years more paramoid than usual, paid 3.5k sold for 9k in 2013.

Easy trading but you need to watch the market and be aware of the long term rise / fall.

and how did this “investment” perform?

Pays NO interest AT ALL and cost you to keep it in storage fees … that’s after buying it in a poorly regulated market with little to no transparency

Pretty poorly I’d say

If you’re full diversified with other investments maybe… maybe

For something different for the kids rather than a bog standard saving account… high income isa with auto reinvestment.

Good luck

until alchemy is a thing again, there’s only a finite amount of gold in the world.

and how did this “investment” perform?

Pretty poorly, as others observed, but it was part of a plan 🙂

If you want to invest in gold, buy an ETF.

I made a few £k in January by selling UK Equities and buying a GBP Hedged Gold ETF…..

My favourite quote about gold

I will say this about gold. If you took all the gold in the world, it would roughly make a cube 67 feet on a side…Now for that same cube of gold, it would be worth at today’s market prices about $7 trillion – that’s probably about a third of the value of all the stocks in the United States…For $7 trillion…you could have all the farmland in the United States, you could have about seven Exxon Mobils (NYSE:XOM) and you could have a trillion dollars of walking-around money…And if you offered me the choice of looking at some 67 foot cube of gold and looking at it all day, and you know me touching it and fondling it occasionally…Call me crazy, but I’ll take the farmland and the Exxon Mobils.”

Attributed to Warren Buffet. The values might be out of date but the general point still stands.

As said above, there are curating fees, and it only performs as well as the market.
Buy a good clean 996 911 or BMW Z3M coupe and store it away. Up and up currently.

Buy a good clean 996 911 or BMW Z3M coupe and store it away

Considerably harder to store than a few coins / bars…

A mate of mine was discussing it last night, on about getting some for his kids rather than a savings plan.

It’s a daft idea. Open them a stocks and shares junior ISA each and make some diverse investments, including gold mines, ETFs, etc if you must.

Shed Brewed is on the money though. Classic cars have outperformed just about every other investment class. You will need a nice gaff with heated garage to keep it in though, and you’ll need to hide the keys for 17 years…

…and then it’ll get wrapped round a lamp post first drive…

Have you looked up historical gold price charts? Be prepared for a bumpy ride. The value of gold has risen since the beginning of the year, leading the “herd” of retail investors to start buying. Before you commit, you should take your own view on the likely direction of the gold price over the period you want to hold it for. Gold rises as fiat currencies depreciate, but growth in Asian economies is also a signal for a rise in gold as demand from China and India increases. Indians and Pakistanis in particular have a huge cultural attachment to gold, and many have their entire savings in gold jewellery.

These are just a couple of the factors affecting the value of gold, which is a very, very efficient market. Any economic news from around the world will be in the price within a couple of minutes.

The standard view is that gold makes an interesting addition as a small part of a broad investment portfolio. Furthermore, it is seen as a “hedge” against underperformance in more conventional investments, such as the FTSE.

You should also note that gold is priced in USD, so if you’re going to buy in GBP, you have foreign exchange risk; movements in the value of the USD against GBP will affect the value of your gold. Furthermore, you have the security risk of having small, shiny, valuable objects in your home. Check you are insured, or pay to keep your bullion in a SDP/vault. Bullion traders all offer this service.

Also, don’t forget you have the “spread”; the difference in buying price and selling price. If you’re going ahead and buying, find the dealer with the narrowest spread.

BTW, Star Wars Lego, and photography books, have been my best investment to date. I’m not kidding.

the royal mint is not the cheapest iirc have a look at at Atkinson bullion, have a google for gold price graphs over the years will give you an idea how its performed. as said above some coins are cgt free,

BTW, Star Wars Lego, and photography books, have been my best investment to date. I’m not kidding.

any pointers with the lego I was thinking of having a dabble but there tons of it to look at

You do not curate gold, you store it. Christ, I really am starting to hate the usage of curate these days.

Forget Gold… buy oil at the moment 8)

I reckon you could make 25% or more from a gold ETF if we Brexit. Pound will crash massively if we vote out and you can then sell the ETF and buy £ after a week or so…

I am quite tempted to take a punt myself on this, although making a few £k will no way compensate for the 30s style depression which would follow Brexit.

Although if we stay in, the £ will rise and Gold probably fall…

I’ve been getting silver for my kids on and of. I used Guernsey mint, as was able to get VAT free. You could try bullionby post.co uk, will be cheaper than the Royal mint. For a very gold biased, but sometimes entertaining daily commentary, take a look at http://silver-and-gold-prices.goldprice.org

You can buy old hallmarked jewellery on ebay, a lot of the stuff goes for around the scrap value, all you do then is sit on it until the price goes through the roof and then sell it up the Jewellery Quarter for cash.
I spent 25 years working in the Quarter as a jeweller/model maker.

6079smithw – Member
until alchemy is a thing again, there’s only a finite amount of gold in the world.

By that logic I’d go with helium as a dead cert.

Was holding two 100g gold bars in the far east once … nicceee.

I’d say gold is actually pretty pricey at the moment (safe-haven investing given bumpy equities). If I was going to do it, it be waiting for it to devalue first.
That being said, I wouldnt bother.

Footflaps logic above is bang on. Brexit actualy looking very unlikely – so again, i’d wait.

Although if we stay in, the £ will rise and Gold probably fall..

UK not significant to massively impact gold price, FX unlikely to be huge as a NO vote is assumed, but there will be a bump for certainty. 1% movement today on v good No poll.

Forget Gold… buy oil at the moment

OK my bathtub is full of crude oil, now what?

OP IMO Gold isn’t an investment its a punt. As @mefty says if you want to buy use an ETF

If people knew what was going to happen to gold/commodity prices and fx rates they wouldn’t be posting here they would be billionaires. @footflaps if the market is exoecting a Leave on tje 22nd and it goes that way there will be no movement or a bounce. IMO hard to see GBP weaker vs the euro a year from now if we Leave, what happens in the middle is noise and only exceptional traders can make money

If you want to invest in gold, buy an ETF.

I had a client who got windy pre-2008 and went into gold in a big way. He initially bought gold funds, but then he started fretting about whether it was “really” gold, who actually owned the underlying assets, counter-party risk resulting from that and so on. He ended up buying a vast amount of gold, and a vault in Switzerland. Although his diversified portfolio when I last saw him included quite a lot of good quality agricultural land with wells, on which he built a fort…

🙂

I have silver bullion. It’s low at the mo, but as silver is increasingly used on microelectronics I’m confident the value will climb. If it doesn’t I’ll have it all melted down and made into a cast of my face to hang on the back of the toilet door.

I treat my investments like art. I’ve made some money with art, but you have to be aware that you may end up stuck with art. Make sure you like looking at it!

UK not significant to massively impact gold price, FX unlikely to be huge as a NO vote is assumed, but there will be a bump for certainty. 1% movement today on v good No poll.

The Brexit vote has implications further afield than just the UK, all of Europe will be affected if we leave, so I’d expect to see Gold fall relative to the Euro and GBP post a no vote by more than 1% as there will be a massive sigh of relief and people will be less inclined to retreat to Gold (which is all it’s really used for).

Hopefully we will find out soon and I can be proved right / wrong…

If we vote Brexit, then God help us all, as we’ll be truly screwed….

jonba – Member
By that logic I’d go with helium as a dead cert.

A dead cert to sound squeaky?

footflaps – Member
If we vote Brexit, then God help us all, as we’ll be truly screwed….

[video]https://youtu.be/3xnZ6g14WwY[/video]

mefty, apologies I didn’t mean to ire you.
reuben, how did you know that’s what happened to my 996!

No worries as long as you don’t do it again! I had completely forgotten about this incident of me being a curmudgeon.