Chicago Gold and Silver Investing Fan Blog

New Silver Bullet Bullion

Northwest Territorial Mint - new silver bullion bullet products:

http://silverbulletbullion.com/

More Dominos Fall for the Decline of Dollar

Arizona legislature approves making gold and silver legal tender

BRICS Regimes Forge New World Bank, Call for Global Currency

So Long, Yankees! China And Brazil Ditch US Dollar In Trade Deal Before BRICS Summit

Online Websites to Buy Silver Buffalos

1 oz silver buffalos are very generic and selll for a very low price over spot. I've bought silver before from Gainesville Coins at a very low price.

I may buy it today from another source to see which is better.

Gainesville currently sells the above coin for $30.83 paying via credit card - or $2 above spot price of $28.83. I did a quick internet search and found out that Goldmart sells it for $29.71 or $1.12 over spot. My local coin store (Morton Grove Coin and Collectibles sells it for $2 over spot. So that is a savings of 88 cents per ounce. Plus I ahve to pay for shipping so let's see what is cheaper.

I found out that shipping and handling for 12 1 oz coins cost $19.47 if paid by credit card or $8.95 if paid by personal check or bank wire.

I'm going to try  paying by credit card for this transaction then maybe in the future try paying by check or bank wire transfer. Theoretically if I paid by wore transfer or check it would have cost me $8.95, that is a savings of over $10 if I paid by credit card.

Hard Asset Alliance

 

 

I discovered this website called Hard Assets Alliance. It is a place to buy and sell gold and silver. It is worth noting because it appears to be a very cheap and secure source to buy gold and silver. If that is the case, then it is worth taking the time to learn more about it.

I'm going to use this blog post to document what I've learned about it.

Squidoo Post

Here is a direct quote from a Squidoo post on the benefits of HardAssets Alliance:

Hard Assets Alliance is a new precious metals investment program designed for you to buy and store gold, silver, platinum and palladium with these benefits:

• Physical sovereign coins and LBMA bars allocated to you in storage or delivered to you - your choice!
• Lower prices when buying gold, silver, platinum, palladium, higher prices when selling, lower storage fees
• More choices for storing precious metals offshore including Australia and (soon) Singapore
• More account types available, including Living Trusts! Corporate accounts of all types welcome, too.
• More convenient, less expensive ways of funding your account. Forget those expensive, time consuming international bank wire transfers.

 

How to use the Hard Assets Alliance Website Video (Buying and Selling Gold)

Initial Impression

After doing some quick research on the site, I noticed a couple of things. The biggest is that there seems to be a $5,000 minimum purchase requirement. The prices seem rock bottom. However, it seems to only work for the person who has the money to invest at least $5,000.

One option is to open an account for any amount since there is no minimum to open an account. Then add dollars to the account when available. Then, when the balance goes above $5,000 purchase the discounted price gold or silver.

Price comparison for gold

Here is the price of a 1oz, gold American Eagle.

Current spot price = $1591.16
At Hard Asset Alliance it is $1674.69 or $83.53 over spot.

At Morton Grove Coin Store - a local coin shop I recently paid $67.09 over spot for a 1 oz coin or $55 over spot for a 1/2 oz coin.

In short, the coin shop price is actually better for gold. For silver, I still have to evaluate the difference.

Price comparison for silver

Here is the price of a 1oz, silver American Eagle.

Current spot price = $28.91
At Hard Asset Alliance it is $31.92 or $3.01 over spot.

At Morton Grove Coin Store - a local coin shop I recently paid $3.50 over spot for a 1 oz coin

In short, the coin shop price is only $0.49 over spot more than the price at Hard Alliance.

Summary

Hard Asset Alliance has a purpose for someone. However, for someone that is looking for the best price, Hard Asset Alliance may be very competitive- but not necessarily the lowest. Hard Asset Alliance does provide some advantages like competitively low prices and some remote storage options that are worth looking into.

Acquiring precious metals is just one piece of financial plan

Is gold right for you? To help answer this question you gotta look at 5 broad areas:

1. Income
2. Asset acquisition/management
3. Asset protection and liability protection
4. Leverage
5. Information (be prepared to exit or move to another asset class at the right time)

1. Income- you gotta first have money to buy gold. So, if you don't have money, it may be best to make it before you buy gold.

2. Asset aquisition/management- Now that you have income, you can buy gold right? Only if you follow the pay yourself first principal. You gotta be able to pay yourself first by buying gold (or other assets) before you pay your mortgage, your car loan, food, entertainment, internet, phone, vacations, etc.

3. Asset protection and liability protection- Another are to consider is asset protection. What is the use of having gold if you lose it. You gotta make a plan not only to buy gold, but you also gave have a rock solid plan (and process for improvement) to keep it and prevent it from being stolen. And I don't just mean stolen from burglers. I mean from being stolen by the government and even own friends, family, or business associates.

4. Leverage-Just following the first 3 areas can lead to a prosperous life. However, to take it to another investment level, consider possible leverage plans to be able to acquire even more gold. What do I mean by leverage. You can think about acquiring gold through the use of other people, other peoples money, and other people's time, and other creative means.

5. Information (be prepared to exit or move to another asset class at the right time)- Gold is money. However, it does not mean you can't lose money. People can and will lose money if they don;t know what their doing. So in this area, you gotta decide if you are disciplined enough to educate your self on things like exit strategies for gold and buying and selling cycles for gold.

Combibar now for sale in the United States

The Combibar is now available for sale at Gainesville Coins. This 10x10 gram pure silver bar is not cheap, Gainsville is selling it for $162.54. It holds 3.125 ounces of silver. So if you do the math, Gainsville is selling it for over $50 an ounce. The spot price of silver is $32.10 so they are selling it at a whopping over $18 over spot.

Introducing....The Combibar

Swiss private mint refiner Valcambi has introduced a new product called the combibar. The size of a credit card, it can be made out of pure gold or pure silver. A gold bar is 50 grams and a silver bar is 100 grams. What makes it unique is that it can be broken up to upto 50 parts. Each part is the equivalent of 1 gram for a gold combibar and 2 grams for a silver bar.

The combibar is currently being sold in Eurpore and should be available in the United States in about a year.

For your information 50 grams of gold is the equivalent of 1.7637 ounces of gold. 100 grams of silver is the equivalent to 3.527 ounces of silver. At today's spot prices a gold combibar we be about $3,000, where as a silver combibar would cost about $120.

Relative Expectations

Last year, silver did not sky rocket in price as many were hoping for. However, it still rose an impressive 8.2%.

Last fall, a friend of mine talked his friend into buying a stash of gold and silver. At the time of purchase silver was around $34/oz. A few months later it is down to about $30/ounce. Now, that friend is feelign a bit duped because she bought the silver expecting the price to go up not down.

The only thing I can say is that for precious metals, there are up and down swings in a short time period. In this case, it was only  few months.

The long trend however is up. It is hard to believe that when you look at the price of gold from 2012 to 2013 gold was actually up 7% and silver was up 8.2%.

What other investment for the common man made more than those numbers last year? Certainly not a CD or other type of bank deposit.

On January 1, 2013 the silver price was $31.07. A year from now, no one knows what it will be. There are some lik emy friends' friend who will be disappointed she does not make a killing on silver and silver goes up to $40-$50/ounce. Then again, if it goes up ONLY 8% to $33.55/ that may not be really that bad because how many other investments out there can make that much? Gold has risen for 12 years in a row at an average rate of about 16.8% per anunm.

Why do governments have to issue currency?

A one ounce .999 silver buffalo, produced by a private company. Beautiful, real silver, worth something in the world market, but in the United States it cannot used as legal tender or is it considered currency by the Federal government. Why not? The government wants control.

In a truly free society, anyone can issue currency. That is how it's been throughout a lot of history. Anyone is allowed to mine for precious metal, mint coins, and then use those coins as currency or money. That idea sounds radical in today's world of government issued fiat currency.

However, what we allowed was the government of countries to have the power of issuing currency. In the United States the Federal Reserve- a government controlled central bank is the only entity by US law allowed to make US dollars. There are private mints out there who make things such as silver round coin. However, it is not recognized as "official money".

The government wants control of the money supply. However, what is happening is our current government is making a monstrosity of the money situation. The Federal government is currently over $16 Trillion in debt and that does not include the estimated more than $100 trillion more in future unfunded entitlement liabilities. To combat this problem, the Federal Reserve is printing money like there is no tomorrow. There will be consequences to this madness.

But believe me, they know what they are doing. See, the money printing will benefit select groups - especially the Federal Government- who can't possibly pay off their debts with current revenues (tax dollars) coming in. So, they have to conjure up some more revenues. These new revenues will not be revenues. Instead they will simply print more dollars and give it to themselves. And their problems are solved just like that.

Massive money printing will absolutely help the Federal government pay some of its debts. The problem is that in the process, there will be a lot of angry people affected by the other side of the money problem. THe question then becomes how does the government solve even bigger problems of social unrest, massive unemployment from the private sector and the rest of the after effects of a governemnt that has so manipulated and tinkered with the money supply, that they have not even thought of the as of yet to happen unintended consequences.

 

 

Patience is a virtue in investing

Imagine if you had bought a bunch of gold anytime in 1994 when the price of gold was in the $350-$390/oz range. 10 years later if you held onto all that gold, your investment would not have risen much because at the start of 2004, the price of gold was only about $400. However, if you stayed patient and not sold your gold in 2004, your gold would be worth over $1700 an ounce today. That is over a 4 fold increase since 2004.

The lesson in this is that investing take patience. If you know you are buying a fundamentally undervalued asset like gold is right now. Coupled that knowledge with that fact that the world is devaluing their fiat currencies, it may take some time but I feel that gold will eventually rise dramatically at some point. When that happens, if you have been a patient investor over these years and have hoarded gold, then within a short period of time your wealthy can multiply by many fold right before your eyes.