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Gold Sold From Vending Machines In Germany
There are fewer hassles for an adventurer or business traveler bigger than lugging around bags of silver and copper pieces. Luckily TG-Gold-Super-Markt has installed gold vending machines in 500 locations including train stations and airports all across Germany. The machines charge about 30% more than the current trading price for gold, and are updated every few minutes. All are closely monitored by cameras, and like 3rd and 4th edition, electrum pieces are not accepted.
If gold is selling for $1K per ounce, a 30 percent increase is $300!!
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
but I can't see the point to this. Granted I don't have the problem of needing to have gold bars available but I still can't see why somebody would do this.
I prefer a candy bar. Gold hurts when I chew.
If this isn't a "sell" signal, I don't know what is.
From TFA: "Because of the crisis there is a lot of awareness of gold," he said. "It is also a great gift for children for them getting gold is like a fairytale."
Imagine... you hand them a gold bar for those 250 bucks and they try to unwrap it for a few minutes before they realize, nope, it ain't chocolate.
Truely the gift of a wealthy sadist.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is extremely different. But someone must see a business opportunity in this niche market. Personally, I'm not the kind of guy who has the sudden urge to buy gold at the train station or airport especially at 30% over the going rate maybe some people are I guess. I'm also not the kind of guy who spends in the thousands for a burger or ice creams with gold foil shavings on it, but there are restaurants out there who do this and they are in business because some people just love gold. I wish them luck, but I'm not sure how far they can go with this idea.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
For when you quickly need gold?
For all black market dealings anyway. Once they phase out cash in favour of a more monitored and traceable cashless alternative the value of this stuff is going through the roof.
Gold holds its value like nothing else and if you're brought up to court by the RIAA it's going to be a lot harder to take your gold than it is for them to change the sign on your bank balance.
The machines charge about 30% more than the current trading price for gold
Yeah, that seem about right, considering the level of logic in most of the "we must return to the gold standard" posts I've seen. They may actually manage to make this a viable enterprise.
I now present several guest posters who will now provide examples of just the posts I mean.
Moderators: Before moderating a comment Insightful/Informative, check to see if a child post has already refuted it.
Am I missing something? Is there really such a demand for gold on the street that the convenience of being able to purchase it from a vending machine warrants a 30% markup? What possibly could justify an individual purchasing gold at a 30% markup in small quantities?
I'm not an economist (not that they have really have a good track record lately) but this seems like a ridiculous scam.
"Because of the crisis there is a lot of awareness of gold," he said. "It is also a great gift for children - for them getting gold is like a fairytale."
Somehow I think little Jimmy or Susy would have prefer a Playstation or a bike or something.
Is this the next level of the Cash For Gold commercials that seem to be everywhere? Buy gold off of people at a ridiculously low price,s melt it down, resell it at a stupidly high price, and the keep repeating the cycle.
I traded all my mod points for these magic beans.
This is certainly an interesting concept but I have a handful of concerns -
1. Why as an investor would I pay a 30% premium to purchase physical gold?
2. Assuming I would I then have to worry about keeping the gold physically secure once I take possession of it.
3. I run into issues when trying to sell the gold after I've taken possession because how can anyone be sure that I haven't tampered with the gold? How do they know that 1oz is still 1oz? What if I drilled and filled it?
There are many other ways to purchase gold as an investment that eliminate the above issues. Gold ETF's are one. They are easy to trade and move in and out of. There are services that will let me purchase gold and store it at their locations, and will certify the amounts as to avoid purity issues as well as security issues.
If you truly believe that the world economies are going to collapse why bother to buy gold at all? You should be buying guns. Believe me, you'll need them to protect more important things like your family and your home.
Interesting idea but only suckers will buy from them. :-)
Did anyone else read just the headline, and figure that some enterprising RMT had come up with a vending machine selling World of Warcraft currency?
Man, I need to interface with the real world more often.
Now I can always get me gold!
gold doesn't rot so i'm sure you could find a few people who thought this would be a deal worth having at some point.. it would be different if it were some perishable item that is time critical, with something like this it's just a matter of waiting for the right peopel to come along.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
We are at the beginning/middle/end of a gold bubble, just like we had a .com stock bubble in 1999/2000 and a real estate bubble from 2001-2007.
Actually, if you try to buy physical gold in small pieces (such as the 1 gram wafer mentioned in TFA) you'll find the markup is easily 20% or more over "spot price."
The spot price you see quoted in the daily business reports is really only relevant if you're buying "paper gold" such as certificates in a common pool ... or if you're an institutional investor buying hundreds of ounces at a time.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Silver on first post, sorry.
From my understanding of these things, 30% isn't out of the ordinary for "limited edition" gold coins (y'know, the ones they make 5,000 of because they don't think there's 6,000 people stupid enough to buy them), or other sources of non-investment gold.
That means your average fool on the street will probably see it as about what they'd expect to pay...
indeed, taking a look at the price of gold lately and it is quite clear that it is way over-valued compared to its history...
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I could see someone realizing that they have too much cash to get through customs buying gold.
...because it's the right thing to do.
.. would anyone pay 30% more than the current price of gold is beyond me. What is beyond me also, is how this idea made it past the marketing department.
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Money laundering seems like a pretty obvious application, and likely a very profitable one.
Gold can't be traced, is universally accepted, and is easily verified for purity (at least gold wire, gold bars are more easily forged). So the obvious users of gold in quantity are for the criminal element. Further, you need to then locate the vending machines in areas with a minimal chance of theft, and enough traffic to encourage a feeling of safety. There's a reason drug deals are done in shopping malls and government buildings, it's a much harder place for something to go wrong!
I predict profit!
When I lived in Switzerland '86-'88 you could get small gold ingots from a UBS ATM on the Bahnhofstrasse in downtown Zurich. Just the sort of thing a conservative Swiss banker would do on the way home from work.
You can't fight in here - this is the war room!
Wouldn't it suck if the little corkscrew thing started to push the gold out and right when it's going to fall it stops and the gold just sits there. Man, that'd be so much worse than not getting a candy bar!
Where I'm at, Coca-cola sells for more than a 100% markup between a store and a vending machine.
30% sounds pretty low. Why not just sell cokes?
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
Maybe they're planning to get them all stolen at some point, claim for the gold on insurance, and then sell it anyway.
It's the only way I can see them making any money on this.
Sounds like your mother fooled around with a member of the Glup clan shortly before you were born and you are just venting some long repressed feelings. It'd take a bit more than a charm spell to bring you to our side. Linux is generally the tool of elites, so take your IT to the next level and spend some points on those stats.
and regardless of what mommie says, dead lizards do not help coughs.
How amazed would you be to suddenly find that you just forgot what I wrote and you needed to reread my post.... again.
We are at the beginning/middle/end of a gold bubble, just like we had a .com stock bubble in 1999/2000 and a real estate bubble from 2001-2007.
Well, which is it?
<Complete your profile by adding a signature!>
Or the dollar is over-valued. Considering that we recently drove ourselves trillions more in to debt, I would put my money on the dollar being over-valued.
The economic collapse scared everyone into the dollar (Treasuries). Wait until we are in a full-fledged "recovery". They'll leave the dollar to invest and watch the dollar plummet.
What if it eats your money? PITA to have to get your 250 euros back out of the machine,
But remember that the amount of gold is finite, and the number of people who desire it has increased. And the number of people who both desire it and can afford it has increased even more. Also, lots of it is "used up" in things like plating chip connections to prevent oxidation. (Not much per each, but there's LOTS of chip connections.)
So one should EXPECT the price of gold to be high by historical standards. Don't know if it's overvalued. (I expect that it is.) Just that this isn't a good argument.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
It isn't possible to say until it crashes, and it isn't possible to know in advance when this is going to happen.
I do know that it is way over its fair value at the moment. The main real market for gold is Indian jewellery, and Indians are mostly not buying now as it is too expensive. It may well inflate to even more than its fair value before it pops, but I don't know by how much it will be.
Inflation-adjusted, the price of gold isn't all that high. People are buying it as a hedge against hyper-inflation. Doing so efficiently, by buying GLD shares or gold futures, isn't necessarily a bad idea. Buying physical gold coins right now is just a ripoff. If I had any I'd be selling, even though I think gold will go higher, as the markup you can get for physical gold is unreal (30%! vending machines!).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Am I missing something? Is there really such a demand for bottled water on the street that the convenience of being able to purchase it from a vending machine warrants a 10000000% markup?
In all seriousness, this will be a boon for privacy nuts, the very rich, money launderers, and anyone else too lazy to buy direct for cheaper. Keep in mind that tax evasion is something of a national pastime in Germany.
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From my understanding of these things, 30% isn't out of the ordinary for "limited edition" gold coins (y'know, the ones they make 5,000 of because they don't think there's 6,000 people stupid enough to buy them), or other sources of non-investment gold.
Or jewellery...
No sig for the moment.
Pffft. We all know the real money is in mythril. Heck, with gold you barely get armour to protect yourself against a level 2 orc.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
This isn't a rational thing. It is to get the people who are doing the "OMG the economy is going to collapse!" thing and don't know what to do. They see this and go "Ahh I can buy gold, gold is always safe!" It isn't targeted at rational investors, or even rational survivalists for that matter. It is targeted at alarmist doomsdayers.
the size and density thing..
is it impossible to find a combination of multiple materials that combined will match the volume/density of gold?
lead and sand for example?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
How funny! I wondered where Germany got all of that gold from!
They must have downloaded it over the internet from Africa!
Copper currency is good because the copper has an intrinsic value.
So I am hoarding Pennies, pre 1982 pennies, made a machine to sort them out of the regular pennies and go to bank to buy all of the pennies that they have then sort out the pre 1982 pennies and cash back in to new pennies for older unsorted pennies. i figure a couple thousand dollars of copper in pennies (which I won't melt, but will hoard) are less of a rip off than buying gold. Copper is always useful.
I am also hoarding quarters, nickels and dimes as well just not in as high quantities as pennies. My goal is to get a few barrels of pure copper pennies. Them be really good barter tokens in an apocalyptic world.
Gold, pfaw, gold is for the elite asswipes who will rule the post apocalyptic fiefdoms, I am into copper cause I am going to become a mid class merchant who bakes bread, gets fed and maybe sells goods to the elite. The elite are goign to be involved in wars and stuff and probably be dangerous, I am going to be a merchant.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
If you truly believe that the world economies are going to collapse why bother to buy gold at all? You should be buying guns. Believe me, you'll need them to protect more important things like your family and your home.
World economy might not collapse but the local German one might. According to TFA, German investors like gold because they have lost everything 2 times in the past (WW1 and 2).
Taking post WW2 period for example, your idea of buying guns wouldn't have been useful because the occupying Allied troops prevented societal anarchy. But whatever investments Germans made in Hitler-era corporations, Reich war bonds and whatnot were probably wiped out.
But the people who hoarded and hid away gold during the war would've come out.... golden.
indeed, taking a look at the price of gold lately and it is quite clear that it is way over-valued compared to its history...
So what changed? Answer: Gold actually has uses beyond being pretty, ductile, and imperishable now.
We use it in electronics, medicine, science, etc.
You must be new here (TM)
It is my understanding that the lowest denomination of gold, the single gram of gold, will cost 30% more than the value of the gold inside. This is about the same amount that you will pay anywhere. The extra cost comes from the assay (it is sealed in an assay card), the minting costs (which are higher for small pieces like that), and the cost of the rather nice looking box it comes in (not sure WHY they simply MUST put it in a nice box). Basically, the extra cost is like an ATM fee, only a bit higher (about $10-20), which is probably quite worth it, honestly.
Actually, this can make a lot of sense for Americans working overseas. Defense contractors (my brother in law works for one in Germany) get paid in dollars instead of euros. Depending on how the dollar is faring, some months they take a big hit in pay and are only able to afford the basic necessities after conversion. Other months they fare better. Instead of having their savings in either US dollars or Euros, if they buy gold during the good months, they could then cash it in when the dollar is weak and be able to maintain their quality of life. As opposed to savings being in dollars and having to exchange when the dollar is weak. Or having their savings in euros and when they come back to the states having to convert back in a weak euro market.
It wouldn't work out for everybody, but Germany has a very large foriegn military presence. So in some ways, it makes sense for people who get paid in one currancy, but need to exchange for something more useful. So if they can exchange for something that holds its value, they wont loose even more when they need to make a withdrawl from their savings.
As it turns out, exchanging currancy this way is a big market. A trader might only make fractions of a us cent on each dollar exchanged to what ever currency has less value than the dollar, but they trade tens of millions of dollars, wait until the currancy they traded into improves in value, then trade back and make a few million. pretty straight forward, but you need big bucks to make any real money in it.
If this were true, I could buy "hundreds of ounces" then divide them up and sell them at 20% markup. That sounds like easy money. Why am I sitting here in this cubicle?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
For something to be a scam there has to be deception. There is no deception here - you know exactly what you're getting and exactly how much you're paying.
From kitco.com:
Gold Bar 400 oz $378,440.00 = $946/oz
Gold Maple 1 oz $1,015.85 = $1015/oz
Gold Maple 1/2 oz $514.98 = $1030/oz
Gold Maple 1/4 oz $266.90 = $1068/oz
Gold Maple 1/10 oz $126.50 = $1265/oz
Gold Maple 1/20 oz $75.25 = $1505/oz
Now all you need is a smelter, minting facility, and a distribution model and you're ready to start making some easy money.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Holding some hot cash? Just robbed a bank? No problem, for a fee of only 30%, you will have converted the cash to untraceable gold bars that are easy to store and hide, will probably hold their real value at least as well as a bank account and are easily convertible to any world currency without attracting the Interpol's or FBI's attention.
Am I missing something? Is there really such a demand for gold on the street that the convenience of being able to purchase it from a vending machine warrants a 30% markup?
The type of person who would make a spontaneous commodities investment at a vending machine probably isn't the type of person who's concerned with those kinds of details.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. -Aldous Huxley
It's a fucking ripoff.
The gold price is already inflated by the crisis. It may rise further, but to buy it at 30% above market value requires a lot of faith. It's not as if gold is getting any rarer.
However, it is a very clever business idea. Gold glitters very nicely, and you can entice poor people with the shine of a small, overpriced gold bar while letting them justify it as "an investment in the future". I'm sure they'll make lots and lots of money off something marginally less deceptive than a slots machine.
If this were true, I could buy "hundreds of ounces" then divide them up and sell them at 20% markup. That sounds like easy money. Why am I sitting here in this cubicle?
Most likely, because you lack the initial capitial to buy the "hundreds of ounces" (and honestly you'll probably need an order of magnitude or more to really make this business plan work) to begin with. Sorry dude, but the way out of techo-serfdom isn't that easy.
Out of curiosity, why was the parent modded funny? If such an economic colapse was to happen then this is genuinly good advice but I suppose that most people don't even want to consider the possibility of it coming to be, much less being prepared for it...
Or maybe it was a joke and I just missed it?
Linux is generally the tool of elites
Bzzzt sorry. Real "elites" use something like Solaris or a BSD. Only anti-Microsoft script kiddies use Lunix.
I'll wait till they have vending machines with gold pressed latinum.
:w!q
Now if I could just find an XP vending machine, I 'd be all set.
Disclaimer: MINAA (Mummy! I'm Not An Animal!)
That sort of markup remains the province of extraordinarily small transactions. Anyone purchasing gold as a hedge or for other investment purposes isn't going to pay anywhere close to 30% markup. Only those who don't know any better are going to pay such an outrageous amount above spot, and I have no sympathy for those who don't bother to educate themselves.
The point of gold investment is that it holds a unique position by moving with inflation (at least since the unlinking of the dollar value with the value of gold). According to Ray Jastram's "The Golden Constant," the purchasing power of gold has remained relatively stable over the last 300 or so years. You can't say the same for any paper currency.
Unless you're paying ridiculous premiums for the gold you purchase, even if the value of it falls the purchasing power of it remains mostly unchanged.
What's so special about gold? There's a whole lot of things you can buy bulk and sell at a considerable markup.
Some of my favorite places to visit do this with books: they buy large quantities, and sell individual copies to me at a markup.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
If I remember my history, quite a lot of people did hoard and hide gold during the war. It benefited them very little. A stash of gold may protect you for a while, but sooner or later someone comes along that you can't bribe to look the other way, and then you're dead.
Much of the gold belonging to those cautious investors ended up looted, and traded to the Swiss for foreign exchange to finance the Reich's war effort. The rest probably ended up lining assorted SS pockets.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
All are closely monitored by cameras, and like 3rd and 4th edition, electrum pieces are not accepted.
WTF does this mean?
You should see how well this business model works with drugs!
Sometimes my arms bend back.
And when you try to sell the gold (coins or bullion) you've once bought at 20% markup there'll always be an excuse why you won't get the full price. Diamonds are even worse.
For "old gold" in jewellery, even if proven 24kt, you'd be happy to fetch 60% of the spot price. A prime 1kt diamond with certificate you bought yesterday will sell for 50% today.
That said, I need to fight an atavistic preference for a few stones of gold buried in my backyard over some random digits stored in a computer, were it not for the ongoing daily expenditures that are easier to pay by bank transfer.
I'm not a coward by any name.
No clue wtf "like 3rd and 4th edition" means, but electrum can be explained.
$ make available
...this. You can buy them in Switzerland all over the place. If will hurt your teeth less than gold although, being Swiss, the price is about the same.
They are just getting rid of all that excess dental gold from about 70 years ago.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
It's a Dungeons and Dragons reference. Before 3rd and 4th editions, electrum pieces were a form of in-game currency, worth five silver pieces or half a gold piece if I recall correctly.
Long? What do you mean the signature at the bottom of every comment I post on Slashdot is too lo
Can I interest you in an individual copy of my book then? At a markup, of course.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
You are still bogged down in 20th century way of thinking.
You need to think of the future. Namely - time travel.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
...Get off my /., this is news for nerds. Every nerd should understand a basic D&D reference :\
If you stole someones credit card I would think it would come in handy. It is better then a sack full of canybars.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It's a Dungeons & Dragons reference.
There has been a substantial rise in the premium for taking physical possession of gold bullion rather than holding it in a pool or via ETF. Draw your own conclusions as to why ...
No Inflation Taxation without Representation
Relative to what? Suppose I was in London with ten sov'reigns bright in my pocket in the year 1709. What could I buy with them? Suppose now I am in London with ten sovereigns in 2009. What can I buy?
One thing hasn't changed: London was and is a colossal trading centre, so if it exists and I have the money I can buy it. But everything else is completely different. What if I want a passage to Boston, in the colonies - and back again? Well, in 1709, my sovereigns might buy my passage, several weeks on a sailing ship in dubious conditions. Just. The cost of such a trip was many months' pay for a labourer - people would indenture themselves for years in exchange for their passage. What if I want the same in 2009? Why, I can get from London to Boston and back again the next day if I wish it, and I'll have ample change left over for shopping while I'm there.
The same goes for almost everything I might seek to buy. What if I desire personal transport? How many horsepower can I get for ten sovereigns in 2009? A hundred or so? How many horsepower can I get in 1709? One or two? Or contrariwise: what if I would hire myself a servant? Ten sovereigns will get me a labourer for six months or so in 1709. In 2009, ten sovereigns for even two months' work would be a low wage.
Economy and society and technology have changed so much: how do you compare the value of those sovereigns across the centuries?
Oh, of course: some things don't change so much. Always there is demand for beer, and beer changes little enough. When I go into an alehouse, and order whiskeys and wines of the best, what can I have? Well, a pint of London porter was 3d a quart, or a penny and a half for a pint, or 160 pints for a sovereign (this being back when a sovereign really was worth a pound, not just having that nominal face value). Nowadays, a sovereign sells from the Royal Mint for £200, and a pint of porter - Dublin porter more likely nowadays - is something like £3. That's 67 pints for a sovereign.
So to my mind, where it really counts, on a London street buying beer, the value of that sovereign has fallen substantially in the three centuries gone by.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
It is also helpful to remember the current fear factor it great, and we are living in times when people will pay anything just to feel a little safer. For instance guns and ammunition sales are skyrocketing, even though there is only so much one can use. A friend of mine sold a gun for twice of what it would fetched a year ago, to a guy who already had many guns. There is no logic to the inflation, just scared people who have more money than sense.
Which I mean literally, because if things come to pass as the fear mongers predict, gold and guns are not going to help that much. The food will not be sale, and will be surrounds by land mines and other high explosives, not pea shooters.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
A ten for 13 ones?
When you exchange money there usually isn't a premium involved.
For thousands of years gold has been recognized as money. It is only because our paper money has lasted a surprisingly long time that people don't readily recognize it as money. No paper money system has lasted longer than 100 years, and ours is about 80.
1 ounce of Gold has always bought about 400 loaves of bread. You would think with all the advances in modern machinery this would make gold dirt cheap. It hasn't because it is so scarce (thinks tens of grams per tonne of dirt), and the process to extract it is very environmentally dangerous because it requires sodium cyanide.
Because of its rarity, gold is one of the most efficiently stored and universally recognized forms of wealth you can have.
Shit. If I were a petty thief with a freshly-lifted wallet, one of these things would be my first stop. Instantly convert someone's credit/debit cards into gold, which can be melted down to remove any identifying marks, at a 70%+ rate of return?
It's a money launderer's wet dream.
Right - because someone who reads a site on tech news because they're interested in tech has to also play Dungeons and Dragons? Are the two groups synonymous? If I see a group of people rolling dice can I go over and ask them to design the schema for my database?
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Umm, am I the only one to see the obvious money-laundering possibilities here? Big brother tracks money, no-one tracks gold...30% is a steal
Just for clarification: ETFs are "exchange-traded funds", which is effectively a bucket filled with X, where X is absolutely whatever, and each share is a proportionate ownership of the bucket. The shares are traded.*
Now, for commodity ETFs, some actually have filled the bucket with physical gold, while others just have filled the bucket with a note saying "JP Morgan promises that this note has the value of lots of gold". Nothing can happen if the stock exchange or the administrator or the accounting or the custodian goes bust - however, in the latter case, if JP Morgan goes bust you own essentially zilch, while in the former case, you own a bucket full of gold.
Needless to say, checking whether your ETF holds physical stock or a derivative based on the stock might be an idea. There should be little if any difference in fees.
* The theory, which admittedly is crazily clever, is that the shares should always be valued according to what's in the bucket every second of the day, because you are able to get a bunch of shares and _trade them in_ for a proportionate amount of the bucket-content.
I can't believe this post got tagged as "insightful". Is Slashdot a celebration of ignorance?
I could understand it as a good joke!
The reason why precious metal has been used as a backing for money is that it's hard to get! To mine out only some grams of gold you need to dig out several tons of rock. This is a garantee that gold will always be an expensice and valualbe metal. If the price of gold skyrocket more gold would be mined but at a higher price since less profitalbe mines would be used. In Norway, my country of origin, we had very little gold since we had few/none colonies. Then we used silver to back our currency. But this was less succesfull hence silver is more common.
Only if they are over 30.
Oh, was that my outside voice?
ATM fee? i only see them at festivals and other places normal ATMs are not available, does America really still have such things? LOL!
this is funny. Keep it going...
I looked at getting some gold a couple of years ago as a precaution when the banks started having problems. Two issues: firstly, it's difficult to sell unless it has never left the vault of a registered gold dealer. Because it's easily adulterated, it has to be re-assayed unless there is a chain of trust. Coins are a bit easier to sell, but sell at a heavy discount. Secondly, the price is wildly unstable, so that it's only suitable for speculation, not as a precautionary investment. IMHO the best precautionary investment is some dollars, yen, euros and pounds held as banknotes. Obviously you will lose some value to inflation, but that's low at the moment and if you view that as your "insurance" charge, it's not that expensive.
As one who has a wide streak of goldbug in me, I must ask the question: why? At 30% over market price who the hell would buy gold out of a vending machine? If you're the type who thinks inflation is going to stomping Europe so hard that 30% is an acceptable markup for gold, then you're not the type who's going to be buying gold out of a vending machine.
Are gold dealers not allowed in Germany or something? Is it illegal to sell out of store fronts? Why the hell pay such a ridiculous markup for a commodity metal? It must be a European thing...
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
The bearish sentiment in a lot of the comments on this article give me great confidence that gold (and hard assets in general) still have a long way to run. I'll be selling at huge profits by the time the average /.er figures it out, which is probably a little ahead of the general population.
Plenty of people are paying absurd markups (10%+ above spot) to get physical gold, which they'll end up selling back at an equally bad price (10%+ below spot) because they don't trust bits. Not a totally stupid position, but overpriced IMO.
But gold isn't safe - it could easily fall by half (relative to inflation), and while in the long run it may return, as the man said "in the long run, you're dead".
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
One gram of this gold is actually worth less than the market price for one gram. When you take your gold bars out of a professional gold vault, they cease to be "Good Delivery", which means they lose value to other traders since their purity is not guaranteed to the same standard.
Real gold traders always keep their gold in a vault, or move it between vaults. This is extremely expensive - but gold bars are expensive - $400k each! So it's not just a 30% markup - it's even worse than that. Confidence trick.
The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
Right - because someone who reads a site on tech news because they're interested in tech has to also play Dungeons and Dragons? Are the two groups synonymous? If I see a group of people rolling dice can I go over and ask them to design the schema for my database?
This is a "News for Nerds", not an actual tech site.
That's what happens when you only have one bank (the Federal Reserve), even if it has thousands of different names...
and the gold bubble in the 80's
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
end.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
sure it is.
Clearly it's not at the beginning becasue ti has risen sharply.
Economic indicators are showing an improvement, and the dollar is gaining value, but secondary indicators are still weak.
So we are just coming over the hump.
We are at the beginning of the end.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
lets ee:
Privacy nuts: transactions are recorded, so they are out
The very rich: way too financial savy for buy gold at 30%
Money laundered: the transactions are recorded and this just means they will have to launder gold.
I don't' know German tax law, but isn't the money they are using to buy gold alread taxed? Wouldn't converting ti back create another point of taxation?
My impressions of German are that they are reasonable smart, ahve hot women, and over value their beer.
You heard me.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Seriously?
I know of no stores that will accept gold as payment (unless it's in official currency, and then it's just cash anyway). I haven't asked around, but I also suspect that my local bank would be very recluctant to cash it for me. I certainly wouldn't expect any random bank to do it for me.
We don't have such around here, but would pawnbrokers even give you close to a decent deal on gold? I.e. if you're paying a 30% markup on buying and then paying a 30% markup on sellng, you'd end up with 49% of the original cash value, so why even bother?
Gold is not consumed, and provides no use to most people other than as an investment.
Water is something that is consumed, quite regularly.
Additionally, the price of water bottle is $1-$3 (depending on your location). The amount of gold that could be purchased for the same quantity of money is minuscule.
Therefore, I declare your analogy inept. Try comparing against cars next time.
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
I don't know where I got it into my head, but I remember electrum being worth between a gold piece and a platinum piece. You're likely right (it's been a while for me), but I do wonder why that relationship sticks in my head.
"Gratuitous complexity is akin to chaos" - True Vox
I'll stick to selling grass to a small circle of people.
8 oz = $162.50/oz
1 oz = $200/oz
0.5oz = $225/oz
0.25oz = $240/oz
0.125oz = $320/oz
1 gram = $420/oz
Markup is much better and the initial cost is much more reasonable.
Plus, repeat customers and no need to go "make sales". I'm not some punk on the street asking you if you want any weed.
It may not be NYC pricing (goddamn you guys get raped down there), but up here in Toronto but it's plenty for me. Almost Zero risk and I get to smoke for free.
The best part? Even if I get caught with a half pound while I'm driving it home - the chances of me actually seeing the inside of a jail cell are slim-to-none. Now, if I had that half pound weighed up in 1/4oz bags, then that's pretty much guaranteed trafficking. (guess what? chances are still good that I probably won't see any jailtime at all)
"We stand on guard for thee", indeed. How can I not love it up here?
Nuff said.
Hey Steve, I was gonna call you later. Can you hook me up for the weekend?
You're surprised that retailers have a profit margin over the manufacturers price? I think you're just bewildered that people might even want to own gold. You have a lot to learn my son ;]
In actuality, the paper money you trust is 'marked-up' constantly and behind your back. The value of the US dollar has lost more than 90% of it's value in the last 100 years. How?...
It's called monetary inflation, the greatest secret tax ever conceived. Government deliberately prints more money than the GDP justifies and waters down that paper in your pocket and in the bank. You think 5% depositor's interest is making you money? Think again. See the *real* inflation at http://www.shadowstats.com/ and see that you are earning *negative* interest. ie. You are being robbed.
Gold maintains it's purchasing power for a number of reasons, paper money does not.
Learn about gold, and how invariably ALL paper money becomes an elite tool to steal from the middle class, over a long period of time. We are very close to the inevitable collapse now. If you don't think it's inevitable, read history. All paper money collapses, it's just a matter of time. You think it's different this time? How? Has greed and corruption been bred out of the human race?
I also can't decide if it'd be worse to have the machine eat your $100,000, or return it to you in quarters.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
The key concept to understand is 'value'. The question has to be asked, "value in terms of doing what?". The most obvious answer is "to buy stuff". Gold historically maintains it's purchasing power in relation to paper currencies. What you see is when the Dollar drops, gold goes up. What's really happening is not that gold is worth more, it's in fact just maintaining it's purchasing power, whereas the dollar is losing it's purchasing power.
So they'll get a good picture of the thief as he makes off with their gold. Yeah, that will stop them.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
gold doesn't rot
Neither does most junk food.
Correctness matters. Mercy matters more.
One current problem with gold is the lid at $980/oz. Every time the market touches that trigger someone big is coming in and sell sell selling until they drive it back to near $880. Don't know who, but they must have a pretty good pile of the stuff at the moment to have kept this up this long.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
i'd have thought gold vending machines would've hit japan first
http://images.google.com/images?client=safari&rls=en&q=japan+vending+machine&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=gZ05Stf8MMaGtgeApsjVDA&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=1&ct=title
they sell everything in vending machines in japan.
http://www.techfresh.net/japanese-vending-machine/
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
After all, electrum is poor man's atium.
So...When Ryan Crowder and the trader come to town will you be trading for firearms or books?
Since you're dollar isn't worth that much gold anymore it's more in the range of $1-$7
Now all you need is a smelter, minting facility, and a distribution model and you're ready to start making some easy money.
Wasn't that what Goldmember tried to do?
bickerdyke
... but I only use my Gold to store and trade the Latinum inside ... so much easier to handle than the eye-dropper ...
Damn, I wish I had mod points today; this is so nicely written.
The world has changed and we all have become metal men.
"but still a very low probability event"
.com crash. Is it really so hard to understand that money has to come from somewhere, and if it doesn't produce anything, it will eventually run out. It's common sense.
Why do people say things like this. There isn't a probability associated with it at all, it is completely predictable, as were the last two bubbles. If global political leadership keeps doing what they've been doing, and people keep listening to them, a global economic collapse is a certainty. You simply can't expend resources continually without regard for where they are coming from and what you are using them for. Sooner or later, the economy will become so bogged down and inefficient that production will fall below demand. Since life relies on continued growth (or at least sustainability) to continue functioning, it will then collapse in on itself and shrink to the point where it is sustainable.
It's just like when people say that the current "economic climate" was unlikely. People pouring money into a housing bubble is pretty damed certain to cause a market correction. I don't know why people say it was unexpected. The same with the
Diamonds ?
You do know diamonds are absolutely worthless don't you?
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/198202/diamond
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
this is a fake, there's no such thing here ....
If you don't have any value to store then you don't need gold.
If however, you do, then well, what're you going to do with e.g. 100,000 dollars worth of dog food (~300,000 cans)? You can't carry it, you can't move it, what're you going to trade it for? 100,000 dollars worth of ammo?
You'd pretty much have to hang around it and hope that someone isn't hungry enough to take it away from you.
100,000 dollars worth of dog food: ~300,000 cans
100,000 dollars worth of ammo: 200,000 shotgun cartridges
100,000 dollars worth of gas: 30,000 gallons (110,000 litres)
100,000 dollars worth of bottled water (evian or bon aqua?): no clue, but hundreds of thousands of litres.
On the other hand, $100,000 in gold is only 100 coins.
So... With gold, I can have all the dogfood I can carry. All the ammo I can carry. All the gas I can carry. All the water I can carry and still store a shit load of value in a small easily concealed package which can be traded bit by bit for something else later.
Get it?
Deleted
Not sure about Germany or other parts of the world, but in Poland, many (most?) standard money exchange points buy and sell "gold junk", with about +/- 15% markup on the market price (the difference between their buy/sell price is around 30%, market price somewhere in the middle).
The interesting part is that this "gold junk" is usually in form of perfectly good jewelry - various gold chains, rings etc - and with a much higher actual jewelry value. So you can ask them to show what golden items they got, find something that is pretty, undamaged and you like it, and ask to have it weighted for you - you buy a quality jewelry item for price of junk. If you're lucky and knowledgeable, you may find a very valuable antique even, worth many times its weight in gold.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
How do US gold coins stand in the gold market? If you buy it directly from the gov, you get the coin and a box and certificate. If you keep that intact does that protect the investment into the coin?
I am wondering about this because have gold securities is nice until the communication systems go down, so a little on-hand product would be nice.
Same question about silver coins.
Yeah, I'm a little paranoid.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
If you had bought gold, and then ran on a local gold-based economy only, before the "crisis", you would now be able to buy six times more with it, than before. Or in other words: The "crisis" would not even have touched you.
The rule to avoid them fucking you up is simple: Don't use their money. At all.
I am in the process of developing an MMO. And the in-game currency will be gold-based. Meaning you can legally exchange it to other "real-world" currencies. And get gold for it.
They will not be called "credits", because a credit-based currency/economy is a major crime.
Maybe this will help get people started in becoming independent from that system.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Disclaimer: I work at the ISP which is handling this from the IT pov.
TFA is wrong. While the gold is obviously more expensive than what TG buys it at, it is still cheaper than what you, as an end-user, pay for actual physical gold.
Bypassing large resellers and banks, both the online shop at http://gold-super-markt.de/ and the vending machines are cheaper than your local bank or jeweler. I am not saying that everyone should rush to buy gold, but if you plan to do so anyway, there is now a discount outlet.
Speaking as a USian, I think it is overstating the case to assert that "fear of [our] countrymen is the norm" (if that is indeed your implication). Although I can certainly see where you would get that idea from all of the wingnut apocalyptic talk around here. I think that the primary motivation for preserving and exercising the right to keep and bear arms is to keep those in power just a little off-balance. At least, that was the original idea. Whether that is a realistic expectation given the federal government's access to modern military weaponry is another question.
Anyway, it is definitely not the case that most people walk down most streets in the US worried about getting their caps peeled by Their Fellow Americans. Some people, and some streets, yes, but not the vast majority.
Yeah, I know, Off Topic, No True Scotsman, Citation Needed, blah blah blah . . .
Journey onward.
If you start with high purity gold, you could easily divide it with a balance, crucible, and propane torch.
The distribution model is a little tougher, but isn't that what the internet is for?
ebay could be your distribution model
Gold Bar 32.15oz $33,999.00 = $1057.51/oz
lol, all those western gun slinger movies came from carson city, nevada... where many things are still done the same way as before...
Just like with you, we have ATMs both with and without. It usually depends upon the individual bank. For mine (as an example), I don't pay the fee when I use an ATM with my bank's logo. Some banks have agreements between each other to avoid the ATM fee (for customers of Bank A at Bank B's machines and vice versa). If I use another bank's ATM, I'll usually pay $3-5 as a convenience fee for the 2nd bank to make the transfer of funds from my bank account to their system and into cash.
Although I think you don't really care and were simply looking for a reason to bash America (based upon your 'LOL' remark).
Well the 20% would be less if more people wanted 1g wafers. The means for providing them would become more efficient. In fact anything over ~10% markup seems to be premium being charged for the novelty, and convenience. People who go to these vending machines probably wouldn't have gone through the hassle of seeking out the same thing though other channels. And the product likely has the company name, purity and weight of the gold stampped onto it. It's a (privately minted) coin. It makes sense to accept this coin as being what it purports to be because it's kind of hard to fake. It looks like gold, it's heavy like gold, and it has been manufactured to appear to be gold of a certain purity and weight. Someone could go through the trouble to fake this, but it wouldn't be trivial. And they would have to be willing to commit a crime (fraud) to do so. So if someone tried to pay me with 50 bucks worth of gold minted into a coin, then I'd likely accept it as readily as I would a $50.00 bill, especially if I'd seen such a coin before, and were familiar with the vending machines. I would certainly do so if it were possible to put coins back into the vending machines and get credits for currency deposited on my debit card. Vending machines already verify that money is real, why couldn't they verify the goldness of coins snapping a picture of you and recording your name ( on your debit card ) to prevent money laundering. The question is whether the premium attached to holding gold should also be credited to the gold depositor valued in currency, or remain with the operators of the vending machines. 1 gram of gold coins should be worth more than 1 gram of gold. The machines could/should offer the service of verification for free. You insert a coin, and the machine tells you if it's genuine and it's true weight. The operators of the machines might choose to keep the premium as a way to make money. This would discourage people from depositing gold at all, and keep it in circulation, increasing it's appeal as it became more ordinary for people to use. Because they charge a high premium they concentrate not on having convenient machines all around, but on selling the gold coins. Maybe national governments could get in on the game, as they have recognizable stamps to put on coins already. What if the US for instance minted 1 dollar gold coins containing say 1/9 oz of gold charging the spot price of ~ $100.00 for each coin plus whatever minting premium the market would bear. The coins should have the denomination ( really used here as more of a trademark ) and also the more important purity and weight of the gold, as well as LEGAL TENDER. They would be legal tender valued at $1.00 but only an idiot would give one up for a dollars worth of goods.
...
If the grandparent knew which bit of the bubble we were in, he would be buying or selling gold to take advantage of the massive returns you can get from going in the opposite direction to the rest of the market during a bubble, not telling everyone else. It relatively easy to tell that you are after the start of a bubble, or after the end, but anywhere from the beginning to just before the end looks quite similar.
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OTOH, I see people spending $5 or $10 every week on lottery tickets
Good analogy. Lotteries typically pay out something like 30% of their takings, so an investment in lottery tickets is likely to have a return of -70%. Buying gold at a 30% markup has an immediate return -23%. If the value of gold goes up a little, then it may become a profit or, at least, a smaller loss. If we are in a gold bubble then it seems more likely that it will go down, so the total loss is likely to be around 30-50%. Still a better investment than lottery tickets...
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So who, pray tell, wants to be toting around freakin' bricks of gold?! People get killed for their freakin' shoes, yet somebody thinks it's a good idea to carry around bricks of gold?
And they're going to charge 30% more than current market value?!?
I'm sorry, but this sounds like the most asinine idea ever.
[Insert pithy line of moxie here.]
My German teacher related a tale where the family sold a bureau worth a couple of grand (today's $USD) in the morning, and bought a pound of bacon with the cash that afternoon.
Mmmmm! Bacon!
What possibly could justify an individual purchasing gold at a 30% markup in small quantities?
It's a "stupid tax," like the lottery. The people who pay it are taxed for being stupid.
No, I will not work for your startup
(Warning: obligatory Austrian-school-informed left-libertarian ramble ahead.)
You've actually hit one of the key insights as to why the Chicago-school idea of using liquidity to maintain flat prices is a bad thing.
In some industries, constant improvements in technology or specialization of labor lead to prices that fall rapidly year-over-year (because the increased efficiency allows the same goods/services to be produced/performed at less cost). In other industries, prices are stable because technology is mature or has temporarily plateaued. In yet other industries, prices rise because of unforeseen disruptions (example causes: droughts, shifts in climate, changing sociopolitical landscapes, and so on). Computers are a perfect example of a rapidly maturing technology: viz. Moore's Law. Beer is a good example of a mature technology, albeit one somewhat disrupted by increasing costs of doing business (example causes: shifts in global agricultural production toward corn, greater regulation of breweries and alcohol distributors, and so on). Overall, the general trend is dominated by technology and increased efficiency, allowing the same monetary value to purchase more value — or, on a broader scale, for the same resources to support a larger population.
Put Friedman's followers in charge, though, and they'll try to "add liquidity" (print money) to counteract this general trend, and scream "deflation!" if they don't get their way. When one tries to use an artificial index like PPI or CPI, information is lost: any index is going to be an artificial subset of what people are actually buying, so it will be dominated by the bias of whatever industries were hand-picked for the index. The result is basically an information-free number: if it conveys any information at all, the information it conveys (to the extent that the index is representative of the entire economy) is a measure of how much more efficient the economy has become over time, with falling CPI/PPI numbers ("deflation") being better. But measure the same index in the context of an inflating currency, and use such an index as a bellweather for "managing inflation" (choosing whether or not to print money), and the whole system becomes a chaotic self-referential mess, with the last bits of biased-but-useful information squeezed out entirely. (And when I say "chaotic", I mean it in the same sense as the Three Body Problem of Newtonian gravity: a differential equation that references its own derivative, which is thus subject to highly unpredictable behavior — the occasional tidy-looking attractor hiding the fact that it's subject to rapid and volatile changes without prior warning.)
Range Voting: preference intensity matters
Here's a little exercise for you: calculate the markup on the soft drinks, candy bars, and chips in the vending machines in your place of work, versus what you'd pay for those same items if you bought a pack/case of them at the grocery store.
I bet you'll find the markup far exceeds 30%.
Why? Because the the business model of vending machines is to entice the consumer to pay a massive premium in order to have the product right now. It's all about enticing and encouraging the impulse buy. Thus, there's nothing unreasonable about what TG-Gold-Super-Markt is doing. Hell, for a vending machine, their markup is astoundingly low.
Moreover, these gold vending machines have another advantage working for them, in that most people don't know where or how to buy precious metals. If I don't want to pay a 30% markup on that soft drink, I can go to the grocery store and buy a case for a far less odious premium per bottle/can. But if I want to purchase gold or silver in small quantities (because let's face it: most people aren't wealthy enough to be able to purchase them in large quantities), where would I go? How would I do it? In that light, a 30% markup for the convenience of having to research the answers to those questions myself might not seem like such a bad deal.
If you anticipate widespread unrest and civil breakdown, you should be stockpiling lead, water, food, silver, and gold, in that order.
If you don't necessarily think that society is about to come unglued, but you'd like to protect the government from surreptitiously stealing your wealth (by inflating the currency and thus devaluing the currency you're holding), buy silver and gold, in that order.
(The Moneychanger has lots of useful information about buying gold and silver, and also offers a monthly allocation plan. The Northwest Territorial Mint sells gold and silver, and their bulk prices for silver rounds and bars are actually quite good (~8% over spot), because they mint them themselves. Finally, you can often find good deals on eBay, as long as your stick to common bullion coins with a low premium over spot, and purchase only from high-volume sellers with lots and lots of positive feedback.)
Your bank is insolvent.
Taking Money Back