Golden age behind us?

[Cornishfarmer]

I say yes. I started stacking in 2014 we had seen the drop of gold from the highs after the crash.          The best time in my opinion was from 14-18.    This is when the price had dropped and gold was easy to come by.    
The internet had some good companies like HGM, Atkinson’s chards, Bairds where they offered great deals for great coins.                     I feel these days are behind us now HGM Have gone from everything at 3%+ to full retail price but no pictures. Atkinson’s I find the gold I like cheaper to buy in Europe even with fees and postage,   Bairds to buy from them will mean spending a day filling in form and sending ID.    Chards is the only one that I see as still very knowledgeable with great coins but website is harder to use than most.

shaun from Facebook is really the only one I can see who is moving with the times and giving an improved  service than we saw in those years.

what are peoples thoughts when they think was the best time to stack

[KDave]

Agree with all, I say 2015 was the best year for it. 

Hgm would sell sovs for 1.5 percent on much lower gold prices and they sold half sovs for half the price of a sovereign, fair was fair. No date picking, no head picking just lucky dip until certain people spoiled it. Atkinsons was never cheapest but had some decent pre owned from time to time, I recall buying a half ounce lunar snake for 387 and thinking it was pricey.

Now it's 3 percent and a bit more for anything special, and a premium on bullion half sovereigns for god's sake. They are all gouging like an established cartel, but it's the market that lets them get away with it. 

In a few years when bitcoin is 1 million a coin, gold will be worthless again and maybe the good times will return. 

[Nick1368]

8 minutes ago, KDave said:

 

In a few years when bitcoin is 1 million a coin, gold will be worthless again and maybe the good times will return. 

Do you really believe in a few years time bitcoin will be 1 million a coin ?

[Abyss]

Started stacking in 2018 yes premiums, variety and price was all better than today's Covid world. Devils advocate what if this new variant of the coronavirus not only more transmissible but also affects younger generation and more lethal than what media informing us about (the speed the UK isolated from international trade something I have never seen). What if vaccines does not protect against the new variant and we have another fall in stock markets worldwide but this time regardless how much central banks print has no impact. A series of unfortunate events could lead Gold hitting $10,000 oz and at this price you would not be to bothered paid extra 0.5% to 2% in premium and had less variety and choice you just be glad had stacked the metal.

If this is the scenario see $10,000 Gold price I would rather not see it but Gold is the hedge against uncertainty. I am hoping to return to the Golden years in a post Covid world when this will happen is anyone's guess.

[Paul]

The forum here was amazing back in the day when organically growing, a kind of 'unwritten rule' i seemed to assume and recognise was that if you priced over what a dealer would pay you (ie 98% of spot) and what a dealer would charge (ie +3-4% of spot)

All was green light for good & fair deal to both sides buyer and seller   

Seller used to be happy with more cash than a dealer would have paid them and buyer happy getting a "cheaper than dealer/ebay" item  

It was like buying off a friend or helping someone out to break even, sell something to get your money back as it doesn't fit your collecting now

NOW ????? lol

page after page of unsold items.  prices higher than ebay.  no intertest in building trading relationships. massive uptake in selling plastic coffins of super premium PR70 gold. 

Moan and rant over  i get it, times changes and things are not as they once was, but things were better then 

 

[Stu]

Not much of a buyer from anywhere these days although Arshi is still a top man and get the odd piece from him still.

Never been in position of seller as yet.

I do miss lower priced items, I mind my first gold was 2 sovs from the mint at £380 for both and feeling a bit ripped off (which Ivwas compared to HGM etc at the time) These days I am hoping for a big spike in gold and a large tumble in equities so I can swap one for the other. 
 

[Jvw]

7 hours ago, Paul said:

The forum here was amazing back in the day when organically growing, a kind of 'unwritten rule' i seemed to assume and recognise was that if you priced over what a dealer would pay you (ie 98% of spot) and what a dealer would charge (ie +3-4% of spot)

All was green light for good & fair deal to both sides buyer and seller   

Seller used to be happy with more cash than a dealer would have paid them and buyer happy getting a "cheaper than dealer/ebay" item  

It was like buying off a friend or helping someone out to break even, sell something to get your money back as it doesn't fit your collecting now

NOW ????? lol

page after page of unsold items.  prices higher than ebay.  no intertest in building trading relationships. massive uptake in selling plastic coffins of super premium PR70 gold. 

Moan and rant over  i get it, times changes and things are not as they once was, but things were better then 

 

I haven't been here long, but in my experience I have to disagree for a bit. In general people tend to think things were better in the past just because people forget the moan and rant stuff and tend to remember the good deals and laughs better. 

In the small time that I have been a member here i did some amazing deals and made good relations with fellow PM sellers and buyers. Some I chat to on daily basis.

And to answer the Cornishfarmer question: I think we will hit golden ages again. because PM-prices will keep on climbing and there will always be good deals to be made. There will be a person asking the same question on this forum in 2121  . 

[Coolsmp]

8 hours ago, Paul said:

massive uptake in selling plastic coffins of super premium PR70 gold. 

 

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[sstrrs]

1 hour ago, Jvw said:

2121

In 2121 gold will be worthless with the advent of industrial energy-to-mater replicators. 

[KDave]

9 hours ago, Nick1368 said:

Do you really believe in a few years time bitcoin will be 1 million a coin ?

I honestly don't know, what is the value of the bitcoin brand?

[Cornishfarmer]

2 hours ago, Jvw said:

And to answer the Cornishfarmer question: I think we will hit golden ages again. because PM-prices will keep on climbing and there will always be good deals to be made. There will be a person asking the same question on this forum in 2121  . 

I agree with you on gold. It’s the direction of the gold dealers have gone that has changed for the worse.  
Forgot to mention in the op @arshimo2012 and @SVcollector who are offering a great service where genuine bargains are still to be had on a regular basis

[Pete]

I started stacking, more as a hobby to begin with, before getting hooked over 10 years ago.
My first purchases were gold half sovereigns, silver Britannias and a Maple.
The Maple was the first silver I saw with 9999 purity as the Brits were 958 alloy.
The place to buy from was BullionbyPost and they had a very limited inventory, some days less than 10 silver coins.
I recall phoning to buy a few half sovereigns and ended up buying every coin they had that particular day.
By accident I discovered HGM and they were a gold buyer smelting their intake and not caring about coins.
If you phoned and they had just taken receipt of a few coins you could get a price.
I was speaking to the owner ( I think ) and if he had a few miscellaneous gold coins in his desk drawer he would sell otherwise off to the furnace.
There was no UK SF in existence but there was an Australian forum that preceded the SF.
The margins on coins was low and you could, as others have said, buy from HGM a half sovereign at exactly half the price of a full sovereign and sometimes as low as 1.5% over spot ( London fix ) on the day. HGM and BbP did not care about the year of the coin and I was lucky to pick up a batch of Victorian Shields for less than 2% over spot.
However as more people got interested in gold and PMs, over the next couple of years these scrap metal dealers turned into coin dealers and started to take pictures seeing the opportunity for higher margins and customers were willing to pay over the odds for certain eras even though previously all that mattered was the weight of gold.
Then CoinInvest followed by SilvertoGo and other EU dealers arose.
Aurinum for example started as an eBay seller then had a few coins for sale before creating a website adding hundreds of coins and sometimes being the cheapest for some coins especially full tubes of American Eagles and Britannias.
You dealt with the owner as a private individual and not a Company.
The lowest silver prices were from Germany where the VAT on coins ( not bars ) was around 7% ( needs fact checking ).
CoinInvest and STG would add 20% to their prices as soon as you selected ship to the UK.
When the German government raised VAT to 19% there was no advantage to us Brits to buy overseas, but magically the differential VAT scheme appeared so the Germans returned to low tax. We then saw GS.be and the European Mint arise with some others all competing with low VAT and late to the game CoinInvest and STG woke up to the scheme. Meanwhile our UK dealers stuck with the full 20% but Chards and Atkinsons occasionally had a limited supply of cheaper, but not as cheap, silver coins.
Several gold sellers started advertising on TV and with next to zero interest on bank deposits and savings people started to wonder if buying gold and silver was a better investment than sitting on cash. With rising demand, of course prices will creep up to the point where it pays to shop around. Many buyers will not be overly concerned about the last percent in price because if they hesitate someone else will buy.
I once had a job that saw me travel overseas at least twice a month from Heathrow. I always used the same car park and at the entrance there was a board similar to what you would find on a cricket ground or golf course where they show the score. Almost every visit the daily parking rate had gone up a bit and I believe they increased prices until they observed a fall in demand i.e. the pips were squealing. This is what I believe has happened with gold and silver from our dealers so the margins are definitely much higher than they used to be.

So in conclusion the best days are definitely behind us if you measure solely margins over scrap but the volatility in spot outstrips all of this making it kind of irrelevant. No-one can advise whether silver, gold or platinum is a good buy right now. If the prices rise then it was a good buy and if prices fall it wasn't such a good buy.

 

 

[Bars]

Fascinating read that. Like you said, depends on here out. I’m hopeful 2030 people will be saying current prices are dirt cheap 🙈

[Roy]

Pete is spot on here. His story will be a familiar one to some and a history lesson to others 👍

I too think the Golden Age is behind us, but it will probably cycle round again.

The problem is that every man and his dog is now a precious metals/bullion dealer. Suddenly, everyone has got this and that 'in stock' or 'coming next week'. 

Christmas deals, Sunday deals, 'I bought 2 and I'll sell the other as a favour' deals. It's getting ridiculous and it's a condition that has spread from Facebook. It really needs to go back.

 

[dicker]

I echo the views above. 
 

I still use HGM but have noticed that they are now categorising coins by mint and year...I much preferred the lucky dip. 

Similarly dealer margins have increased and business practices have tightened up as volumes have increased.  I do miss some of the more personal service that used to exist. 

On the upside, there are a few decent hobby dealers and people in the forum who been great to deal with and had genuinely interesting items.  
 

Best

Dicker

 

[Nick1368]

I'd say it is what it is . get on with it and stop complaining , nothing lasts forever , if you think 5 or 10 years ago was a better time to buy PMs , well that time is gone, if you took advantage of it good for you, if you didn't , so what ?

Right now this is the situation , it's a dog eat dog world out there and at times like this people show their true colours .

[dicker]

Added to the above, people are much cannier around looking for Sovereign errors / irregularities even more than even 10 years ago.   I suspect there are still a number of errors to be found but most of the “ground” had been covered.

Good in some ways but pretty amazing when you do find something genuinely unknown   

Best

Dicker

[Roy]

38 minutes ago, Nick1368 said:

it's a dog eat dog world out there and at times like this people show their true colours .

Agreed.

[Pipers]

 

I agree with all the above,  we who were on this forum in 2015 -2018 know who messed it up for everyone else.  The consistant sending coins (that were bought at 1.5% -3% above spot) back to HGM.

 

 

[Lea79]

I miss getting a decent sov or 20 franc for under £200 that is for sure.  The price of gold just seems to have jumped up so much.  Nice if your holding not so nice when you want add some more.  It’s a shame HGM are adding premiums judged by date.  I used to love a surprise lucky dip.   

[dicker]

1 minute ago, Lea79 said:

I miss getting a decent sov or 20 franc for under £200 that is for sure.  The price of gold just seems to have jumped up so much.  Nice if your holding not so nice when you want add some more.  It’s a shame HGM are adding premiums judged by date.  I used to love a surprise lucky dip.   

My most recent lucky dip (I think this is now dead looking at their website) was getting two stunning 1959 Sovereigns in really beautiful condition.  Hardly a mark on either.

Best

Dicker

[Lea79]

That was lucky.  It’s great when you get a coin your really happy with 😁

[sovereignsteve]

8 hours ago, dicker said:

I still use HGM but have noticed that they are now categorising coins by mint and year...I much preferred the lucky dip. 

Really? I can't remember the last time I bought from them. Their categories and premiums are ridiculous these days.

7 hours ago, dicker said:

people are much cannier around looking for Sovereign errors / irregularities even more than even 10 years ago.   I suspect there are still a number of errors to be found but most of the “ground” had been covered.

Sad but true. I miss picking up the rarer coins and errors for little or no added premium. It was worth scanning ebay and a few of the bullion dealers on a regular basis but no longer.

[sovereignsteve]

5 hours ago, Pipers said:

 

I agree with all the above,  we who were on this forum in 2015 -2018 know who messed it up for everyone else.  The consistant sending coins (that were bought at 1.5% -3% above spot) back to HGM.

 

 

I hear what you say but I'm not sure that practice had much to do with the way they changed. They simply cottoned on to the fact they were too naive about the numismatic value of the coins they had been selling for a few % points over spot. When certain coins sold in a few seconds and more people started phoning up asking for dates and condition, they were bound to smell the coffee.

I was able to benefit from their early ignorance and witnessed their steady progression over a few years to where they are now. It was quite interesting actually to see them keep increasing the price of shields and seeing how long they took to sell.

[Pete]

42 minutes ago, sovereignsteve said:

I was able to benefit from their early ignorance and witnessed their steady progression over a few years to where they are now. It was quite interesting actually to see them keep increasing the price of shields and seeing how long they took to sell.

I agree and watched them change from just a bullion dealer buying below spot and selling just over spot, happy to make a few percent - in and out the door before the metal even reached room temperature. It irritates me when these dealers add big margins on specific coins, shields for example, yet when you offer to sell these coins they treat them no differently as scrap. No-one can blame them for selling at a market value, but not willing to pay a more reasonable price buying really sucks. A classic is if you send a limited mintage sovereign proof boxed set in FDC condition, you will be offered 97.5% of spot or thereabouts. Same day, your set will appear listed with up to 100% markup. The other company also renowned for this is BbP. Check out their sovereign sets and compare to spot. They don't buy at a higher price than scrap value. When I dumped a load of gold proofs over a year ago I didn't supply the boxes or the certificates, denying these dealers the opportunity of selling sets since they didn't offer a cent more than scrap. I regret not keeping the screw capsules which sell for several pounds. So now I have a significant number of empty boxes and numbered certificates cluttering a cupboard.