I am interested in buying some 1oz Platinum American Eagle coins. Today they are being sold for approx $1,153 per coin. One of the concerns that I have relates to liquidity when it comes time to sell. As I understand it, the only market that exists is to sell the coins back to a coin dealer and I do not want to be held hostage by the dealers. Any one have any thoughts or experience with Platinum coins?
I have always found Kitco to be very fair: http://www.kitco.com/market/ Done a lot of business with them and never had a problem. You can lock in your price selling and buying.
I've bought a lot of silver at www.bulliondirect.com and never had a problem. Check out their nucleo exchange and many times you will be able to get a better price than kitco or alot of the other metals firms on the net. T
If you want the tightest bullion bid-ask spreads in the world, buy from Tulving or AJPM. If you'd like to needlessly waste large sums of money, choose a different bullion merchant. EDIT: Whoa scratch that!... I just checked bulliondirect.com , which has ridiculously tight spreads posted. But are there commissions or S&H fees? Tulving always ships free, no commissions.
Bulliondirect has a 1% commish. on the Nucleo exchange ECN(tack on an extra 1% vs. what you see to buy/sell). Shipping for a 1000oz silver bar is about $65 UPS ground, Gold is about $10-15 for small amounts. They carry Lloyds of Lon. insurance, makes shipping easy. You can also warehouse it at their vaults, delivery not necessary. They're very cheap, very reliable. Spreads are always tightest on gold 2-3%, as a general statement. Some silver can be relatively tight 3-5%, platinum 5-10%, palladium 8-15%.
Also see kitco's Perth Mint certificate program, super tight spreads on platinum for those. A very unique program run in part by the government of Australia.
I also have bought gold from http://www.goldsilverbullion.com/default.htm#WCMpricing but like tulving they have minimums to purchase to get free shipping and most people don't want to buy that much at once. But if you want to buy at least 1k ounces of silver tulving many times has the best prices on 10oz and 100oz bars. At BD people also sell between the MMs so sometimes you can get better prices even with the commission. T
I just did the math. Even before paying nuelco's additional shipping charges, the 1% commission puts the spreads a bit <b>worse</b> than my two preferred merchants, mentioned above.
IMO, not taking physical delivery would pretty much defeat the entire purpose of buying physical bullion. If it's a short term bullion trade (as opposed to a long term investment/hedge), you're better off just trading the futures or ETF.
I have been collecting silver coins for about three years now and have a good collection of both certified and noncertified coins. There are a lot of dishonest dealers out there. However, there are also a lot of good dealers. Lately, I have been using apmex.com. They sell only a few cents above spot and sometimes even sell a few cents under (if you are interested in buying only as an investment). Of course, coins with a high numismatic value are always going to sell above spot. APMEX accepts multiple payment methods. Their inventory is constantly changing so you may want to check their site out every two or three days for deals. When it comes time to sell your coins, there are various ways of doing this. I sell coins on eBay all the time and make good profit. There is also a coin auction site, which I believe is called Heritage Auctions. You can check them out. Good luck.