Sovereigns or 1/4 oz gold coins?

[Darr3nG]

2 minutes ago, LawrenceChard said:

The right one?

😎

Correct!

[Essendie]

@LawrenceChard

SABLE = Stash/Stack Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy.
More than you can use/build before you die.

Originally from the knitting community, but relevant in many collectors homes 🙂

 

edited to add.
My maths skills are more than enough for this thanks Lawrence, I've been volunteering as an adult literacy & numeracy teacher for a few years now.

I am also a little Chards customer.
You may have heard of them, they have SHOCKING postage charges. 😉 
Most of my purchases have been straight from the Royal Mint until recently, so I'm new to branching out looking for other reliable sources.

I'm taking my time finding other places where they might even post out stuff the same year you buy it.

I have run out of thanks apparently so consider everyone who didn't get one thoroughly thanked.

 

Edited October 8, 2022 by Essendie

[Guest]

Never heard of SABLE before. 

[Darr3nG]

4 minutes ago, Apmex100 said:

Never heard of SABLE before. 

Rena Marlette Lesnar, better known as Sable, is an American former model, actress, and retired professional wrestler. She is primarily known for her time in WWE. She began working for WWE in 1996. As Sable, she gained considerable popularity.

[plopzilla]

Obviously it goes without saying if you can get a "good" price on either types of coin then you should consider it an opportunity to add to the stack. I like sovereigns but I do prefer the 24k purity of Brits in terms of stacking (4x = 1oz!) for gold content, along with the luster and of course different designs.

Although a little more expensive to purchase initially, I've always found my brits always held good and a small premium over sovs when selling on ebay or facebook, I would stack Brits.

[TomCooke]

On 07/10/2022 at 23:03, Essendie said:

I've been using my Digi gold account at Royal Mint to save up 

How’s that working out for you? I looked at it and the reviews on Trustpilot seem catastrophic

[Essendie]

@TomCooke
I opened my account last December, so I've had it nearly a year now.
I haven't had any issues & have found it straightforward to use, but when you sell some back, it does take a couple of hours before the money is available to spend on bullion or move back out into your bank.

This is my experience of using it.

I cashed some in the other day to order a couple of 2023 1/10th oz gold Britannias & only had to wait about half an hour before it was available to spend, but it's usually a bit longer.
I believe transferring it back to your bank takes a few days but haven't tried it.
I also haven't tried selling any in the evenings or on the weekends.

I just spend it on bullion - they stick the funds into your investment wallet when you sell digi, so it will only let you spend it on 'investment' (bullion) coins/bars, digi metals, but not proofs or other collect coins/things, unless you wait to get your cash back into your bank, then buy them with your card.
I have to remember to keep a pound or so in there to cover vault fees which come out quarterly, but as I don't leave it in for a very long time or let it build up to a large sum they are under a pound usually.
I'm using it for relatively small amounts (maybe £3-4k over a year).
You can just bung the odd tenner or however much you want into your investment wallet to save it, but it makes nothing sitting there.

I try to put it into gold if the price has dropped a bit then try to make sure I only sell when it's up a bit.

I've done okay, definitely way better than a bank account would have earned on the same money in a year.
You have to buy amounts of digi gold, silver or platinum from £25 up, but actually if the nearest fraction you can buy works out at £24 something, it will let you get that amount.
I've stuck to gold so far.

You just select your amount, stick it in your cart then check out.
Very simple.

I find for me, it's easier not to spend money on rubbish with this option, so if I'm thinking of impulse buying something, I'll stick the money into Digi gold instead.
After all, it's money I have to burn or I couldn't buy the thing. (I don't go into debt to buy anything)
The theory was I'd take it out if I really wanted the whatever it was.
In practice, I never do really want the new headphones/camera/whatever enough to bother taking the money back out.
I reckon at least half of what I have spent on gold & silver this year would have been wasted on junk that would end up in the back of the cupboard if I didn't put it in Digi gold & then turn it into coins.
I find it also really suits me for the money not to be mixed up with household money in the bank by having it already 'spent' into the Mint.
Then when I buy a coin, it's from my coin money.

I've also got a Little Treasures Digi gold for my son that I put half his pocket money in, so now he has got into learning about simple investing, coin collecting & likes the fact he's made more on it than he has on the money in his savings account.
I like the fact that it's really mine as far as the Mint are concerned, although displayed separately, so if he goes off the rails at 18, unlike his ISA sort of savings he won't be able to take control of it & waste it.
I've seen too many lads spaff a deposit for a house on showing off for their first serious girlfriend or whatever to put too much into an unrestricted account for him.
I would have to cash this out & give it to him & I can do that when I choose, as legally, it's mine.
They probably aren't the best place if you have a bigger budget, but I particularly wanted somewhere I could save for my son in a way he couldn't touch (he's only 12) as well to save for coins.

No other gold dealer seems to have that option.

Adult accounts can hold digi gold, silver & platinum purchased starting at £25, kids account can only hold gold.
Little Treasures can be set up as a monthly automatic £25 (min, or any amount you choose) or you can just add one off amounts whenever, or a combination.
You (as the adult) can buy & sell from either as it all goes into your investment wallet.
You don't have to sell it all at once, you click on the sell button & it takes you to a page where you choose how much you want to sell & it tells you what price you'll get, you can accept or not - once you accept there is no going back.

If you already have £100 of digi gold, then you buy another £50, for a while you will have 2 lines showing as digi gold, but then it will get scooped up into one line per metal.
They show you your gold, silver, platinum & Little Treasures accounts as a line each.
I was told by staff that you can have more than one LT for kids if you have more than one you want an account for, but you probably have to phone them to set that up as I couldn't see a way to do it online.


I'm fairly sure they have an app, but I don't use it so have no idea if it's any good.

Their record keeping is a mess from the customer side & not user friendly.
Every transaction on the investment side, whether you've bought a silver coin, or put money in your wallet, transferred money out or bought/sold digi stuff is dumped together in date order (newest first) in your transaction history & you need to open each transaction to see what it was for.
You can filter by Purchase to cut down on clutter, but it will include all digi purchases as well as bullion purchases you had posted to you. I don't store anything in their Vault, but I suspect purchases sent to the Vault would also be mixed up in there.
You need to keep your own records or spend forever ploughing through your transaction history to look things up.
There is also no indication of which end of your purchases over time have been sold, so if you've bought some at 1300, then some at 1500 you don't really ever know which you sold & you don't get to choose, they just count all your digimetal of each type (where you can see) as one amorphous mass.
I asked & got a 'dunno' (The Royal Mints catchphrase as best I can figure out)
That can't be true, or they wouldn't be able to display a % change in value since purchase, as each bit was purchased over time for a different price, so they must have a record of it somewhere to base those calculations on.
I'm not putting enough money through my account to bother to do the maths on it & find out.

The change in value also gets messed up for a bit & means nothing if you sell often.
e.g. If you sell £100 worth of gold, it will adjust it's figures as if you lost that amount of money from the value of your Digi gold for up to a couple of days until it sorts itself out.

My personal opinion is that their sell to you gets adjusted up way ahead of their buy from you, but I'm a newbie at the metals markets, so it's just the impression I've got using the Royal Mint. I could easily be wrong.
They seem to adjust it down fairly fast though if it's the price they will pay you, although they aren't so quick off the mark at night.

If you were transferring large sums rather than a tenner here or a couple of hundred there just using a debit card, it can take a while using bank transfers, so I could see that getting frustrating as you could be watching the price go up while waiting for your funds to show up.
I suspect there are checks that need to be done due to money laundering guidelines on larger sums too which slow it down, but I'm not lucky enough to have that inconvenience.

It works for me & does what I want it to do, but I'm not trying to do anything in a hurry, dealing with large sums of money & I only put money in that I can live without.

Hopefully that makes some sort of sense.
I'm super tired so no promises!

[TomCooke]

Ah - thank you so much! I don’t think it’s a setup that fits my situation just now, but it’s reassuring to hear from someone who isn’t ranting about its snags 🙂

Really appreciated.