Vancouver, CA - my bullion buying experience

[KitboyE17]

I recently popped over to Vancouver from the UK and took advantage of buying some Maples. For those who aren’t Canadian or who, like me, have never been before - I’d thought I’d recount my experience which was - by all accounts - amazing!

Initially I had looked up a couple of coin shops on Google and was prepared to pop in and see what was on offer and compare prices. But whilst I stood on the pavement  checking my map app for directions I noticed I was actually standing outside a building that looked like a bank and was called Vancouver Bullion and Currency Exchange with a tag line ‘foreign currency and bullion exchange’. Could it be that simple I thought?

I went inside and the layout was a simple queue to several tellers who sat behind everyday bank screens. When it was my turn in the line I went to the next available window, sat down at the chair and with full courage said ‘please can I buy a tube of 1oz silver Maples’. 

‘Sure you can,’ the teller replied ‘do you want 2019’s?’. Nodding politely, she ran off a ticket and showed me the price per coin and the total for the tube. At which point I paid - cash, they didn’t accept foreign debit cards (I don’t buy PMs on credit so I didn’t ask if they accept foreign credit cards - sorry) - and she then went off and got the tube of Maples and handed them over. 

As my experience with all Canadians so far is that they are extremely polite and friendly, she then proceeded to chat to me about my visit etc. 

The price - £1.50 over spot. 

That was one of the most enjoyable and easy bullion purchases I have ever known and wish it was that simple in the UK!

Here is their web address https://www.vbce.ca/ 

[5huggy]

4 minutes ago, KitboyE17 said:

That was one of the most enjoyable and easy bullion purchases I have ever known and wish it was that simple in the UK!

If you are ever in the North west of England - you will find that the girls that serve at @ChardsCoinandBullionDealer are some of the nicest I have ever met! 

And the transactions are more like asking for a cup of coffee whilst chatting.

[Tn21]

Are you able to share the full figure @KitboyE17 for the tube of 2019 (25) mapples?

Like the concept sounds neat

[KitboyE17]

33 minutes ago, Tn21 said:

Are you able to share the full figure @KitboyE17 for the tube of 2019 (25) mapples?

 

Sure - when I purchased, and with exchange rates - 401£ for the tube. About £16 a coin 

[Murchison]

I work a couple blocks from a VBCE branch and I go there a lot.

They have excellent service, and here's a hack - they have some mint products like silver pandas, maple leaf, eagles and etc, but everything unlisted as specific products they will consider as "generic". They used to list silver eagles as a separate item, but I checked just now that it is gone, which is to say at the moment they would consider silver eagle as generic rounds.

The disadvantage of such generalization is that when you sell eagles to them, they will not pay premium and will only pay such price as they pay for regular rounds like buffalo.

The advantage of such arrangement is that they are just as prepared to sell those premium items back to anyone who cares to buy them, and at the price of generic rounds too.

The other day I went there to buy some 10 oz RCM bars, and they ran out of those. So I asked them what generic 10 oz bars do they have. To my surprise, they took out two 10 oz royal mint queen's beast series rounds. And they were about to sell them to me for the price of generic bars like 10 oz A-Mark bars. I asked them how many of those did they have, and they told me they got a dozen of those. I was only prepared to buy two that day and so I picked two different ones. Though I had more cash on hand that week to come back and buy the rest of them, it wasn't on my agenda to buy more silver but I was really conflicted because I know such opportunities would not come around very often, but I did not end up buying more.

The catch to this arrangement is that premium items will only be available to be sold at generic price when some customers sell them to VBCE first. And because VBCE does not go out of their way to source those items, you can only come across such deals when you do. I bought a few philharmonic the other day too at the price of generic rounds.

Though the clerks are all very amiable people and pleasant to deal with, their main service is regarding forex and not bullion. So my impression is that the staff do not have a passion for silver product and merely buy and sell them because that's their job. This is not a criticism, I only say this because if I worked there I would've snatched such good deals myself. It is possible they have some conflict-of-interest clause that forbids them from buying stuff themselves. Anyhow VBCE often sells bullion products much cheaper than Silvergoldbull or any online dealers even with free shipping. Their buy/sell spreads are exceedingly reasonable so if anyone happens to live in the Greater Vancouver area make sure you go pay them a visit. If anyone is visiting Vancouver and would like to stop by, be sure to ask them exactly what 1 oz and 10 oz rounds do they carry at the moment. They often source directly from mints like sunshine mints, but like I said, there's a chance they might have some extraordinary items.