I have recently STR and plan to invest some of my capital in Gold. My house sale doesn't complete until the 19th of this month so I have no money to invest yet.

I'm getting a bit concerned that I am going to miss the Gold Bull and pay too much too late.

Any views on this please?

As someone whose name I've forgotten once said: 'there'll always be another chance to lose your money'.

Personally I see gold more as an insurance policy than an investment: I don't think it's particularly undervalued right now, but if faith in government declines, it will go up.

Why do people think that gold might go up?

Its not like that there are gold bullion merchants on the highstreet for Joe public to go and buy gold bars (in the UK).

Who says?

Baird and Co

Do all Baird and Co locations keep gold on site??

If you walked in with £10k would they be able to service you??

also what details do they take or do they just give youa receipt like any other you purchase on the high street??

Probably easiest to give them a call.

Any single purchase over 5k must be reported to Tax office as does any purchase where the total annual amount exceeds 10k from a single supplier.

Any purchase at all must be backed by identification and they keep records (just in case you buy another wedge taking you over 5K p.a.)

Perhaps a much better investment than gold itself may be collectable gold coins especially in top quality condition. In fact any rare coins better than Extra Fine have been doing exceptionally well I believe.
And there're a damn site more interesting

Just putting in an objective view - I have no doubt gold will hold onto its value at least.

i meant theres not one gold bullion merchant on every highstreet - as common as H Samuel or the like. Buying shares is pretty easy as there are brokers in the yellow pages, and it can be done online.

Buying gold - is there anyone in everyday life doing it? Are the taxi drivers, chavs, Daily Mail readers buying it ??? Will they start??? Is this the next bubble??

Gold has advanced to $448.350 - I wonder at what point when everyday people and the media are going to sit up and notice.

Why must it be reported to the tax office??

Surely Gold is tax free??

Or is this to stop money laundering etc??

So whats the best plans... under 5K a year??

Does this mean I can buy 4k at any time from a number of different suppliers and not be reported to the tax office??

Gold is VAT free but not capital gain tax free. Only UK gold coins (Britannias and sovereigns) are, because they are UK currency.

In addition, the Govt wants people to hold paper money, not real money. When someone holds real money (gold) they want to know.

Remember, central banks can print as much paper as they want, which taxes the holders of paper money by stealth (inflation). But gold can't be printed!

Read Alan Greenspan's view on gold (written in 1966):

http://www.321gold.com/fed/greenspan/1966.html



And, as far as gold being correctly valued, no way!!! Gold is dirt cheap in terms of oil. One ounce of gold has never bought less oil than today for the last 35 years.

So what do I do? How much should I invest and how?
I'm so confused.

Use 10 to 25% of your capital to buy gold. Either buy britannias and sovereigns, if you can store them safely, or use an allocated gold account. A good one is www.goldmoney.com, but many respectable gold merchants in London provide this service. Stay away from gold futures and unallocated schemes.

Optionally, if you want to speculate, invest up to 5% in mining/natural resources shares - you might want to invest through a fund. A decent one is Merril Lynch Gold & General.

The rest, split equally in Pounds, Euro and Swiss Francs. Use at least three separate and indipendent banks. At least one of them offshore. Switzerland is best, Channel Islands are OK.

You may want to put part of the cash in short term government bonds (up to two years). But stay away from long term bonds, guaranteed equity bonds, corporate bonds, the US dollar and the stock market.

The long term trend has changed, it's now a different game. If you play by the old rules you'll lose big time.

The new rules are: interest rates and inflation up. Real estate and financial assets down. Credit crunch. Flight to quality. Natural resources to the moon. We are already getting a glimpse, but it's not even the beginning.

how do i invest in swiss and euro accounts??

Is there an easy way to get offshore accounts like Jersey in tax free havens??

But yet control them from the UK??

Any reputable??

http://www.barclays.com/internationalpersonal
http://www.offshore.hsbc.com/1/2/internati...re-bank-account
http://www.ubs.com/1/e/ubs_ch/private/accounts.html
http://www.nationwideinternational.com

PS the reason to put the money offshore is not to evade tax, even if there may be some advantages from deferred interest and so on.

The main reason for doing it is safety and the ability to escape capital controls should a financial/banking crisis occur, which is sadly a not so unlikely possibility in the medium term.

Cgnao,

What is the stability of bullion coins.
I use goldline to see what they are selling at.

For example
The nugget 1 oz is priced at £275
the Maple 1oz is now priced at £262
The sovereign is priced at ~£74

What alters the value of these coins??

Is the value determined on the collectability of the coin??

If i bought something like hte maple how do i know it really is what it is?

I feel gullible unless im knowledgeable. Been ridden too many times in too many deals ;-))

Care to be more specific?

I agree with all you say here!

Quite a large portion of my 'wealth' is held in Sterling (as you said in different banks in Guernsey & Isle of Man).

Do you see any possibility of Sterling going to the wall? I mean, let's face it the UK has some serious debt problems, (both private and well as public), wouldn't this lead to a massive sell off of Sterling eventually?

Cheers.

thedollar will be worse than sterling

If an armageddon scenario as envisaged by many posters in this thread does emerge brought on presumably by more expensive oil over a sustained period I would imagine that sterling will fare better than other currencies due to UK's residual oil resources and relatively mixed economy.

Let's hope so!

Although, I live in Hong Kong and we can now easily open an account at HSBC and save RMB (the People's Currency no less!).

RMB might sound silly right now.......but in the long term?

Still, in the meantime, I am going to stick with my Gold bullion coins and hang on to my Sterling.

Thanks for the advice.

That is simply not true. I walked in, bought 3 krugerrands and 3 kilo bars of silver and was not asked for ID. Just wrote down my details on the receipt, which wasn't even my full name, address with no postcode, which i could have made up, payed by cash and walked out.

I think it depends on the dealer. Certainly Bairds and ATS Bullion in London just ask for your name and address but you can tell them anything you want, no proof of ID needed as long as it's under 5K

3 kruggerands and 3 kilos of silver is probably under a £1k though

Back to my original question

What holds up the value of a gold coin???
What is likely to affect its price in the short/long term??

IE

The Australian nugget 1 oz is priced at £275
the canadian Maple 1oz is now priced at £262
The british sovereign is priced at ~£74

The value of a coin can be equated to:

intrinsic gold value + rarity + fabrication cost

So a gold coin will generally always cost more than the spot gold price to the bod in the street.

The nugget is possibly rarer than the maple or costs more to initially mint.

A sovereign contains 0.2354 oz of pure gold so is priced accordingly.

Its just over £1300 for 3 coins and 3 silver bars. Best to buy bit by bit, during the dips.
Also advisable is to put 10-15% of your portfolio in Gold. If you had 100k you wouldnt buy 50k of gold. Its not for investment, its for protection.

Stick with 1oz Krugers and Maple coins. Unless your a coin collector, why pay so much over the spot price of an ounce of gold ?

Good luck

My 50 quid will only stretch so far!

All this talk of giving name and address when buying gold reminds me of something I read last month.
The US government have apparently been going round seizing people's gold. Apparently there's some law that allows them to do this.
Would not surprise me if there's something similar in British law.
Give them your address, they know where the gold is.

One more reason to keep it offshore.

The US government has the power to take anything it likes in the name of national security. The case you mention is of one indivdual who recently sent some 1933 coins to the US Mint (or whatever the authority is called) and they were confiscated on the basis that they had never officially been released and so they must have been acquired nefariously by someone at some point in the past. This set off a flame war on the gold sites. During the Depression FDR's admin confiscated all gold held by private citizens, and it remained illegal for any US citizen to own gold until (I think) as late as 1974. Obviously this shadow of doubt lingers still in the gold community, as they observe the gradual slide of the dollar to collapse and fear emergency measures being invoked again. I doubt the US government would again try such a trick, but you never know.

This is not a scenario that worries me. If it gets bad enough they consider confiscating gold I'll high-tail it back to Canada, a country I do not foresee having serious currency problems (it's got oil, nat gas, uranium, hydro, vast food resources, gold, asbestos.... you name it and Canada has it)

I been away for a week and kruggerands have shot upto £267.50!!!

I ve made £10 per coin in a matter of weeks- has the run on gold started now????

Any reason why this has happened?? Gold mine strike??

"I wonder at what point when everyday people and the media are going to sit up and notice."

I said that earlier in this thread - I think people are going to notice this leap....

Calm down. It's just inflation.

Your coins have not increased in value, just price. The pound in your pocket is worth less and the gold price is beginning to show it.

ah then its grim....

Now its upto £270 per coin in 24hrs....... if thats inflation, then its grim...

Gold is on the move again, as you note. It is particularly important that it ploughed through the $450/£250 per ounce barrier against which it had been bouncing for nearly a year.

But note that silver is also on the move. Now silver is so dirt cheap at the moment that you can take quite a decent position without actually laying down a lot of cash. One disadvantage is that you can't get physical silver all that cheaply in this country, because of VAT and because silver is only 1/60th the value of gold, so the minting and distribution costs are evidently much greater a %age above spot. Despite this disadvantage, I think it's still worth getting in there, because the downside is negligible while the upside could be quite satisfying if it ever happens (they've been saying silver will explode for the last five years and it hasn't)