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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.
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.
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.
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 Inflation hits hard and money turns to useless paper, gold or anything similar is how you preserve your assets.
Germany after WW1 actually saw this (bread costing million one day and 10 million the other day, but exactly same amount of barter currency. It made helluva lot sense to spend 1000 on gold because withing year those 1000 were only good as tinder and would buy one something like one grain of wheat while gold kept value much, much better.)
Remember that money nowadays that is unbacked is just piece of paper without government enforcing it as legal tender as it is.
Gold at 30% extra is swell deal if you are faced with possibility that your cash would be worth 50% less tomorrow.
-- Technology for the sake of technology is as pathetic as eschewing technology because it's technology.
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!
The vending machines are actually a public safety measure. Whenever somebody "goes Galt" they will immediately head for the nearest gold vending machine, in order to exchange their fiat money slave-currency for good solid gold. They can then be registered by the cameras and collected before they have a chance to cause any public disorder.
:Conspiracy theory ends:
Trouble there is, nobody would be selling gold at +30% in exchange for a paper currency that will be worth half as much tomorrow.
If you want to buy gold at any reasonable rate, you pretty much have to do it well before you actually need it(or you have to be buying in some other apocalypse currency, like dog food or ammunition).
It's a panic sparked by a fear of a coming currency collapse - quite a reasonable fear given the current rate of US government spending, but still a very low probability event. However, while hedging against the chance of the dollar collapsing (and taking the Euro with it) makes sense, it only makes sense to pay a very small premium to hedge against this unlikely event.
Some see this hedging going on by central banks and other who buy and sell gold by the ton, and overreact. Physical gold coins are a total ripoff right now (and entire industry has emerged to exploit the panic), and, seriously, if society collapses to the point that legitimate "intangible" gold (such as GLD shares) become worthless, you don't want gold coins, you want *guns*.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
apocalypse currency
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Gold at 30% extra is swell deal if you are faced with possibility that your cash would be worth 50% less tomorrow.
No it isn't, because one of your other options is gold without the 30% premium. If you don't like fiat currency, fine, invest in whatever you like. But why you'd pay a premium over the market value is beyond me.
Vending machines work for candy bars. I'm willing to pay a markup because I want my snack in my hand right now. What could possibly be the urgency with gold?
(Yeah, yeah, hyperinflation in post-WWI Germany or late '80s Argentina or current Zimbabwe. You think what Zimbabwe needs are vending machines for gold?)
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...
The term "market value" for gold is idiotic to begin with. Market value for what? Gold smelted into 1000oz bars? Gold minted into pretty 1g wafers with a fancy design on the face and fluted edges to prevent dishonest vendors shaving some off? Gold in the form of a promissory note from a bank that holds the equivalent in metal in their vaults? Gold in the form of a promissory note from an institution that holds only a fraction of your gold but claims they are "good for the rest?"
Each of the above will command a different premium over the spot price you see quoted in your newspaper ... and some of those premiums might even be 30% or more depending where you buy.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
If you want to buy gold at any reasonable rate, you pretty much have to do it well before you actually need it(or you have to be buying in some other apocalypse currency, like dog food or ammunition).
See. I don't understand the gold bugs. Most of their hyper-inflation apocalypse scenarios they state that gold will be the new currency, but time and time again nations that have went through hyper-inflation have reverted to bartering instead.
When people are in times to need, they look to commodities with utility rather than value.
So in the wastelands in the future people will value gas, water, canned food, guns and ammo and not a pretty metal.
Secondly, if anarchy does set in, you can always use your gun to take someone else's gold if you wanna bother lugging that around.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Meanwhile, back in reality, paper money is gaining in value as prices fall.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aE9AA32hx8ek
So go ahead and buy your vending-machine gold (instantly losing 30%) and keep talking about hyperinflation as the recession eventually ends and gold crashes back to pre-recession prices.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
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
I think you'll notice though that much like the gold mentioned in the article, people are stocking like CRAZY on ammunition right now. Prices have doubled (or more) in the last 6 months. You have about a snowball's chance in hell of finding any common pistol ammunition on the shelves right now (9mm, .45acp, .40s&w, etc) - people are literally waiting at stores as the boxes are unloaded and buying it all up immediately. All the local stores have had to put a per item limit on customers just to try and keep the speculators from buying it all.
Even if you reload your own it's tough times. To load a round of ammo you pretty much need a case, a primer, powder, and a bullet. Cases are reuseable. For slower rounds bullets can be cast at home out of scrap lead (I've got about 400 lbs melted into lead bars if needed). Powder and primers usually must be purchased (you can make black powder at home, but it's usually poor quality and most loaded rounds use smokeless powder rather than black powder anyways). Like the loaded rounds though, the primers have become rarer than hens teeth. When they become available people are buying them 10,000 or more at a time.
I think overall, be it gold or ammo or canned goods, a lot of people are dumping a lot of money into supplies that they feel will see them through some tough times.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
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
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.
No, really honey, I was just buying some pens and fishing tackle!
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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?
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
Actually, he did answer the question, if you're sharp enough to catch it.
The current administration--along with the Congressional leadership--has shown itself to be hostile to the idea of us mere citizens owning firearms. Demand is through the roof as some of us--the ones who believe that the government is answerable to its people--are stocking up in case of future interruptions in supply. Modern marketing methods include the "just-in-time" supply chain; with the incredible spike in demand, not only are the ammo manufacturers unable to keep up, but their suppliers are unable to keep up with their demand. Metals suppliers--lead, copper, zinc--chemical suppliers--powder and priming compounds--etc. The entire supply chain is thin right now.
Now, the ammo manufacturers are doing the best they can. By raising prices, they're able to pay higher prices to their suppliers, increasing the quantity of raw materials supplied. By doing so, they have been able to increase production somewhat, but that has limits. The factories are running at full capacity. The only way to increase production past that point, assuming the availability of input materials, is to expand the production line. That would require the manufacturers to take out loans. Unfortunately, due to the aforementioned "leaders" running the show, it's by no means certain that the manufacturers would be able to sell enough ammunition to pay back those loans; said "leaders" are working on any number of laws to restrict ammunition sales (see, for example, microstamping, limitations on purchase quantities, and so forth). Considering the political risk, banks are (quite wisely) reticent to loan large sums of money to engage in such ventures. Throw in the fact that everybody knows it's a bubble, and will inevitably burst, and even if the manufacturers could get the money, they know that the increased demand probably wouldn't last through the payback period on the expansion. In fact, this is already starting to happen, proving the wisdom of riding the storm out without expanding facilities.
Does that answer your question more clearly?
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
Demand is through the roof as some of us--the ones who believe that the government is answerable to its people--are stocking up in case of future interruptions in supply.
I'm sorry... Maybe it's cause I'm from Europe, but what does guns have to do with government being answerable to the people?
If they don't answer, you'll shoot them? Hell, in Norway we got 1.5 million weapons with a population of 4.7 million. Yet we don't go around having wet dreams of a future where the government becomes totalitarian so we can shoot people we don't like in an excuse of a revolution.
We got the 11th lowest murder rate in the world. I think you guys just need to stop being so angry at the world.
- These characters were randomly selected.
It's the alchemists guild. They sell via various fronts, for obvious reasons.
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