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bottletop

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Posts posted by bottletop

  1. Where is the best place to sell gold coins in people experience?

    I was a bit disappointed to only be quoted £285 a Kruger by a London dealer yesterday.

    Ebay is definitely a good place to sell...judging by recent prices of completed sales krugerrands go for up to £350. I don't know what the fees would be - probably 4% of the total perhaps. Put them on buy-it-now at 5% over spot with £5 special delivery and they'd go like hot cakes IMHO

    I've worked out that the cost of my stash has averaged out at £250 per ounce, so that's nice :P

  2. I have decided to invest in gold. Can anyone recommend the best way forward for me given my needs?

    1) I'd be quite keen to hold the physical gold and don't have a problem storing it

    2) I would like to be able to buy/sell with the least possible spread

    3) I am happy to go somewhere in London and pick the gold up, but do not want to buy coins on ebay

    4) I do not want coins that have higher value due to rarity. I want the value to be based on the gold itself.

    5) Must be easy for me to sell when I deem appropriate

    Can someone also confirm that physical gold bullion will involve less spread than things like goldmoney.com

    Thx in advance

    You could trry getting krugerrands from www.goldine.co.uk aka Baird and Co. That should cover all of your questions :-)

    Baird & Co.

    137 High St.,

    London E15 2RB.

    Tel: 0208 555 5217

    Fax: 0208 534 3583

    --------------------

    Baird & Co.

    24 St. Cross St.,

    Hatton Garden,

    London EC1N 8UH.

    Tel: 020 7 831 2838.

  3. I am I the only one tempted to do this ? Once we have STR I'm seriously t

    empted to have a few nice holidays and a new car we can't afford <_< after all everyone else seems to be doing it :P

    yeah, do lots of cash withdrawls and buy gold for cash. Rack up massive debts then declare bankruptcy, then sell your gold back for cash and enjoy.

  4. Any ideas who are doing the highest spec digital cameras at the lowest price. :)

    how about this?

    £199

    The Lumix DMC-FZ20 features a Leica DC Vario-Elmarit Lens, 12x Optical Zoom, 5.36 Megapixels and a 16MB SD Memory Card is included.

    The DMC-FZ20's advanced zoom lens takes you all the way from 36mm wide angle to 432mm telephoto. Shoot open landscapes, zoom in on a room interior, or pull a distant object right up close.

    With most compact zoom lenses, the brightness tends to be lower in the telephoto range. Not the FZ20. Its 12x optical zoom lens delivers f/2.8 brightness all the way to full telephoto.

    Use the 4x digital zoom together with the 12x optical zoom and you've got ultra-powerful 48x zooming. That approximates a huge 1728mm lens on a 35mm camera.

    Benefits:

    Leica DC Vario-Elmarit Lens

    5.36 Megapixel CCD

    12x Optical Zoom

    Optical Image Stabilizer

    Mega Burst Shoot (3fps)

    2.0" Monitor With 130k Pixel Resolution

    16MB SD Memory Card

    Histogram Display

  5. Biggest ever recorded. Have a prosperous 2006 everybody :D

    LONDON (AFX) - LONDON (AFX) - The UK recorded its biggest ever current account deficit of 10.2 bln stg in the third quarter, driven by a wider trade in goods and services gap, official figures showed.

    The deficit is the highest since records began in 1955, the office for National Statistics said.

    Analysts were expecting a 7.8 bln stg shortfall, though the gap for the second quarter was revised down substantially to a 1.4 bln stg deficit from the previous estimate of 3.1 bln stg.

    The statistics office said the third quarter deficit is equivalent to 3.4 pct of GDP, up from 0.5 pct of GDP in the second quarter. This is the highest rate since the fourth quarter of 2000. The UK has now recorded a current account deficit for every quarter since the third quarter of 1998.

    On a geographical basis, the ONS said the UK recorded a 7.5 bln stg deficit with the 25-nation EU, compared with a 5.8 bln stg shortfall in the previous quarter. Meanwhile, the current account deficit with non-EU countries was 2.7 bln compared with a surplus of 4.4 bln stg the previous quarter.

    The total deficit on trade in goods in the third quarter came in at 17.0 bln stg, equivalent to 5.6 pct, the highest since the fourth quarter of 1974.

    The trade in services surplus fell to 2.9 bln stg in the quarter from 5.0 bln in the previous quarter, largely as a result of the of the 1.9 bln stg insurance claims related to Hurricane Katrina.

  6. Aren't interest rates always higher than inflation? (I know there are arguments that inflation is statistically hidden but bear with me)

    In which case, whilst cash may not be the best investment for periods, can it ever actually lose value?

    Forgive the possible naivity of the question!

    Isn't what is important the rate at which the money supply is increasing, not the rate at which a basket of consumer goods varies in price?

    M3 in the UK increased by about 10% last year, so presumably you'd need a return of >10% to maintain your spending power. Inflation is after all a monetary phenomenon, the increase in CPI just reflects that (badly)

  7. I've been using Halifax's sharebuilder to learn about the stockmarket http://www.halifax.co.uk/sharedealing/sharebuilder.shtml. You have to set up a ditrect debit for at least £20/month It's £1.50 a trade (you have to pick an investment date since the buying is pooled).

    I've been doing this for over two years and learn't a great deal, mainly I can't stock pick individual shares but I've been quite good at picking investment trusts in certain markets.

    There's a forum on the fool.co.uk http://boards.fool.co.uk/Messages.asp?mid=9680110&bid=51570 about this product.

    I'll second the halifax sharebuiler as a cheap and easy method - though you don't have to make monthly deposits. There are some shares you can't buy (GBS) for example, but on the whole it's good.

  8. Wow, a whole 1k. That's got to be at least 2 weeks worth of MEW for most homeowners.

    If DVD player are only £25 these days - how much does a second hand one go for?

    (Sounds like a BS article to me)

    Mrs bottletop put an advert on her work's noticeboard advertising a spare 14" telly we had...for £15

    Guy comes round the next day willing to pay the full amount. He only had a tenner, a bit of change, and a twenty, so he got it for £11.83 in the end and we were happy with that. So we ordered a pizza...for £13.99

    Second hand electronics have virtually no value - I wouldn't pay more than 10-12 for a dvd player, or £150 for a 1 year old £1000 computer.

  9. I pay into my public pension every month. And I also pay taxes.

    I bet at the end of the day I dont even get back equal to what I paid in.

    You say "I pay into my public pension every month"...

    where does that money you get come from to pay into your pension? The govt. Where does the govt get that money from? The private sector. All the taxes you pay are simply shuffling money from the govt to you in salary, then back to the govt in taxes, then on to the next public employee in salary, then back to the govt as NI contributions, and into your pension pot. But where did it come from?

  10. I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned Today's Daily Mail front page.

    The cost of funding state workers' retirement shall be £817billion or £30k per household!! This warning comes from The Institute of Economic Affairs and they say that the situation is getting worse by the week because of the growing number of people employed by the state - on wages increasing at almost twice the rate of inflation - and their higher life expectancy. Pensions for NHS staff, teachers and civil servants are paid for out of the promise of revenue from future taxpayers - basically taxes shall have to rise!

    and... Goverment to bail out the Royal Mail pension fund to the tune of £2billion!

    I'm shocked.....I new things were bad......but this is a desperate situation... this Country is DONALD DUCKED!! :angry:

    Privatise the pensions liability. Then get the newly formed private pension organisation to assume all the country's £1.2 trillion debt as a pensions asset at no cost to the banks so they can start lending again from nothing.

    We can then all delcare bankruptcy and walk away, leaving the public sector emplyees holding worthless pension guarantees. The entire country's personal debt written off, banks with no debts on the books, council tax slashed, and only a few upset council employees. Gotta be worth a shot. :ph34r:

  11. 750 pounds a month to cover a mortgage and all living expenses is amazing - i'd struggle to do that without a mortgage/rent. Where do you live exactly? I presume no the South East! :-)

    We live in leicester, and our mortgage is only £283 per month...we bought for 55k 5 years ago and have 10 years left to go as we overpay. We could drop the payments down to £180 and revert back to our original term but as we don't overspend anyway there's not much point.

    Now of course similar homes are £120k+, which we could just about do if we fancied being poor for the rest of our lives. :(

    Our 4 biggest joint expenses are

    mortgage 283

    council tax 80ish

    gas/electric 50

    broadband/tv/phone 70

    the remaining £267 covers food, house insurance, etc.

    Including our personal spending of 600 between us, along with the £700 bills means we spend 1300 or so, so I didn't think we were being that tight!! lol. I'm 36 and mrs B is 33 so we've gone through the "p*** it against the wall" stage :-)

  12. mrs bottletop and I put £350 each in a joint account per month and that covers all our bills/mortgage/food. Occasionally we have to put in an extra £50 each to cover TV licence and non-DD bills

    We both spend 300 per month on "incidentals", leaving around £750 each savings.

    Both of us earn around 22k, so we live well below our means....spending around 50% of our earnings I guess.

  13. managed to pick up the last 3 sovereigns from weightoncoin.com still priced at £64. Now they start from £66 :rolleyes:

    Going from my excel sheet:

    Average cost towards the end of 2004 £57

    Average cost now £64, about 12% higher.

    Also, a 1oz ingot from bairds was £239.25 on 14/02/05, now it's £282.75, which I make to be 18% up in 9 months.

  14. Wow!! you were fast spotting that! Less than 6 mins from listing to BiN!! :o Nice buy

    yes lol, a lucky find. I have a few favourite pages set to things like "gold, BIN,newly listed" and I spotted it there.

    Also (for everyone's info) there's always a lot of chinese ingots on ebay - unless you're one of the rare collectors of silver plated lead ingots...don't bother:

    got silver?...

    not silver

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