tallyhojim

Buy some land, preferably woodland. Go fully off grid. Sorted.

It'll be hard work at first, but once the off grid infrastructure is placed, keeping it running becomes relatively easy. And with the cost of complete solar and energy systems inc deep cycle batteries getting cheaper and cheaper, it's even easier than before.

Not a deal as such, but Royal Mint are selling 2019 Full Sovs and 1/4 Gold Britannia's at the lowest the lowest price I've seen thus far since being a member of this forum. Oddly enough 1/10oz Britannia's are still fairly high.

As of 15/10/2019:
2019 Full Sov £288.64
https://www.royalmintbullion.com/Products/Sovereign/Gold/UKB19SVC

2019 Gold Britannia 1/4oz £318.68
https://www.royalmintbullion.com/Products/Britannia/Gold/UKB19GQC

Hope those prices last for a week when my monthly buy cycle kicks in!!!!!

Doesn't Perth Mint also ship internationally? Either way, my interest is piqued.

Let this be a lesson to all - always take possession - no matter what.

Today I received in my change after shopping in Morrison's.............several Polish silver coins saying "20 Groszy" that are almost identical in size to our 5 pence's.

Never noticed till I got home 2 hours ago.

GOD DAMMIT!!!!

Lying and dishonesty is still lying and dishonesty. And there are no worser qualities to have in a man than those two. I'll not be following this cowboy anymore. Good riddance to him.

4 hours ago, S2G said:

Payments are securely processed by Stripe, which store all payment information, not myself.

As for everything else... if you believe I mishandled your personal information (I only collect an email address) or broken any laws, please report to the ICO or use legal advice.

That's it? That's your response to legitimate feedback? That's how you intend to handle questions?

By retorting a snotty remark back like a petulant schoolboy?

How utterly arrogant of you.

And lastly, you may want to have a read of the relevant UK legislation (again assuming you are UK based) concerning online and distance selling, which your website will most definitely fall under. That means you are required by Law to state your business name/address/contact details.

But as you say, perhaps I should report it?

And maybe I will.........

41 minutes ago, S2G said:

@RichmondStacker @Miganto Thank you for the kind words and for your comments.

I understand that not everyone will be able to justify paying for the service, and that's fine. If you're happy to do your own research every time before you invest, then you don't need the service to help you.

The service is for those who buy gold frequently, and want a reliable tool that gives them all the data they need to make a quick decision. If Gold Compare saves you more than £2-3 a month, plus time, then it's clearly worth the money. I'm also going to continue improving the service and upcoming features (such as custom dashboards for collectors and a "lowest premium" table for investors) will add more value for money.

Of course the future will tell

But it won't though, will it? You have already stated in a prior post that the annual subscription fee will likely be increasing in the next week or two, so any savings a customer makes by purchasing from the cheapest dealer will likely be swallowed up by your site fee, making any savings null and void.

And how do you know your site will be catering to those who are only frequent gold buyers? Have you conducted any market research to establish this hypothesis? How do you know that those who are frequent gold buyers don't know where the cheapest deals already exist? Have you tracked click through's to ascertain which items are the most popular? If so, does that information tell you anything in how you can create affiliate link programs with dealers?

There's a reason why all these comparison sites don't do paywalls - because they don't work.

Then there are other issues. You intend to take subscription payments. What have you done to ensure your are fully GDPR compliant? It's a lot more than just plonking a GDPR statement on a website, I assure you. By accepting subscription payments that now means you fall under various anti money laundering and tax regulations. Have you done any research on this? And how is that payment information retained and secured? What is your business contact details (telephone number/address etc) as these are all legal requirements. I've read through all your T&C's and cannot see any of that legally required information anywhere. Your T&C's state you don't offer refunds - have you had any confirmation that such a policy is legal under the Law of England and Wales (assuming London is your true location)? Have you had confirmation that your T&C's itself are fully compliant and legal?

The moment you decided to turn it from a hobby site into a business platform, you opened yourself up to a whole universe of legal requirements.

2 hours ago, S2G said:

After much deliberation, I decided to introduce paid plans to the website. This would be the easiest way for me to cover current expenses and most of all — time spent working on the project and maintaining the service.

As a gesture to all early users, the paid plan is temporarily set to £2 per month (paid annually, so £24/year). This will likely increase in the next week or so, so if you're thinking about subscribing, you can grab the offer while it lasts

Krugerrands and gold bar pages remain free to use for the time being.

To forum members who donated I will give away a few months of free access — get in touch via private message

In my opinion you've just killed your site in it's infancy by hiding it behind a pay wall. Most shoppers aren't going to be signing up to a subscription service to then see what the best deals and prices are. You would have been better off contacting the dealers and thrashing out referral links or some such similar to how people sell Amazon items, instead of hitting the shopper up front.

All that will happen now is some techie web building nerd will come along, recognise the mistake you've made in firewalling your site, and build theirs as an open free to view platform that includes paid referral/affiliate links, dealer banners etc.

Heck, I've just Googled the words "How to build a comparison website" and was inundated with tips and guides in how to do it.

You need to rethink your decision and ask yourself whether you have just applied a short term solution to a long term question.

Could be early days, but I've just checked the site again to see who's charging what for Full Sovs, and The Buckingham Collection have slashed their own prices by about £10 - £15 to make them more competitive. They were originally around the £310 - £315 mark.

Are we seeing the first signs of dealers using this to price match I wonder.....?

3 hours ago, Paul said:

Most stackers here are odd, they don neck beards, live in their mothers basements, in the dark, fear the end of the world and monetory collapse being just round the corner and give their kitchen knives names.  Friends are the last thing we should have access to share information   

You missed out the part where we wear the same underkrackers for days on end, and then turn them inside out to create a "fresh new pair" complete with Rik Mayall back crack skid marks.

With UK Gold Compare doing a pretty damn fine job in showing multiple gold dealers in real time prices, I wonder whether that will result in dealers taking note and reducing their prices in order to not lose out to the other dealers? Does anyone know whether it has already had an effect on dealer prices or is it still too early to tell, what with it still being a very young compare site?

23 hours ago, S2G said:

Another popular request ticked off the list: I figured a way to get data from Royal Mint's website, so Royal Mint has been added next to all dealers for comparison. I've also added Harrington & Byrne to the Sovereign table.

Really hope you find a way to monetise your site. Be a shame for you to not be rewarded for your endeavours. Perhaps you can strike up some affiliate links when people click "view" to purchase, or even have a "buy now" button instead. I'm not much of a PC coding tech so have no idea whether I'm talking sh##e.

I didn't received anything per se, but today I did find in my local Tesco a rather worn 25 cent Washington coin from 1984, issued by the Philadelphia Mint as denoted by a tiny P next to Washington's hair bow.

I hope he doesn't reveal himself to be Gordon Brown.......

@S2G I'm curious what your stacking habits are and where the interest in Gold originates from.......

50 minutes ago, 5huggy said:

Primarily the mint charges for a second set of "STAMPS" production and handling costs

IMHO this also fleece's little guys who cannot GO LARGE!

What is second stamps?

Will get on it! Is it just a url link you need?

16 minutes ago, S2G said:

Quick announcement: thanks to the first contribution to the project (by a forum member!), I decided to buy a domain address for the website:

https://goldcompare.net

This should be a lot more memorable and easier to type!

Since the address is brand new, it may take 24hrs or so for everyone to be able to access it (you may get some weird errors in the meantime).

The old address ending herokuapp.com will be still around, but I can't guarantee it will work in the future, so it's best that everyone uses the new one.

Any chance you can add 1/4 and 1/10 Gold Britannia's? What do you need to do that - links to dealer pages?

10 hours ago, S2G said:

Thanks everyone for the feedback and kind comments!

@Clens92 @nee4891 Referral links is an interesting idea, I will consider it! Thanks!

@Martlet Data is being scraped from each page in real time. This approach is prone to errors (you will occasionally see "error" in the table) but seems to work for now. The whole project is still a bit experimental.

@SendYourCoin2Me @HighlandTiger That's a very good point about postage costs. It's tricky — I'd rather not add it to the price, as some people may collect their order in person or qualify for free delivery (when you spend over £X). I will think about some options 👍

@Coolsmp @Fastnick @richatthecroft @Ansel I agree more dealers would be even better. I just added Sharps Pixley and Baird Mint. I'm happy to add more dealers, but it will be really helpful if you post a direct link to their page (saves me time googling!). Thanks!

I'm wondering if there will be interest to track other coins, not just gold sovereigns? Even silver ones? As far as I know, sovereigns are extremely popular, so that's the only reason why they were my first choice.

Don't forget to also include the Royal Mint. It's a good idea for people to see how dealers are pricing their goods against the actual supplier itself, as some dealers are more expensive than the Royal Mint itself.

Maybe have a customised visual identifier that makes the manufacturer stand out. A bit like how forum member names are wrapped in blue.

Half Sovs
https://www.royalmintbullion.com/Products/Sovereign/Gold/UKB19HS

Full Sovs
https://www.royalmintbullion.com/Products/Sovereign/Gold/UKB19SVC