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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.
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.
Captain Obvious, is that you? :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Anyone taking bets on when we see GoldStar machines? Melts your gold down on the spot and gives you cash. ;)
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?
I could see someone realizing that they have too much cash to get through customs buying gold.
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!
If gold is selling for $1K per ounce, a 30 percent increase is $300!!
We be in the wrong business!
Maybe Gold foil hats would be better.
In my other life, I eat cats.
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!>
Have you met any marketing departments?
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.
http://cltracker.net -- powerful craigslist multi-city search
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.
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...
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?
When it comes to awesome bad plans involving elements, Theodore Grey is usually a good one to talk to...
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
You should see how well this business model works with drugs!
Sometimes my arms bend back.
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
gold never really loses value*
Sure it does. Lock yourself in a bank vault filled with gold for a year. How much gold would you trade for water on day 2? How much gold would you trade for water on day 10? How much for food? How much would you trade for indoor plumbing on day X?
Okay, that's kind of a ridiculous scenario. But I'll tell you how gold loses value: if no one wants it. The only reason gold had "value" in ancient times was because people realized that it could be used as a medium of exchange. It had no value of its own other than being pretty. You couldn't eat it, you couldn't use it for armor or weapons. Mostly worthless except for being a fake mechanism of trade due to its rarity (harder for people to "pretend" they did a service or sold a good than by using a leaf or seashell in trade).
Gold's real value skyrocketed when we found out we could use it for stuff (electronics, medicine, etc), but its market value remained the same (everyone wanted it because everyone else wanted it). Now that credit and/or paper cash seems ingrained in our cultures, gold will lose value once people stop wanting it for anything but jewelry, electronics, and other actual uses. The gold bubble is going to burst soon, and people with a lot of it are trying hard to sell it off a little bit at a time, trying to con people saying "Only Gold is this stable", hoping to get real currency, or even better, durable goods and livestock. When you think about it, what's been more stable than *stuff*?
*Spelling corrected
...Get off my /., this is news for nerds. Every nerd should understand a basic D&D reference :\
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.
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.
Only if they are over 30.
Oh, was that my outside voice?
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.
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.
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
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."
who thought of putting latinum inside bricks of worthless gold.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
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
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.