Maybe you've been thinking that you'd like to
buy some gold and I know I've been thinking that I'd like to fix some videos where I talked
about buying gold. So I came up with a plan. I've posted quite a few videos covering the
different aspects of buying gold, but I've never done a full buyer guide for newcomers
to gold. I'm going to fix that right now. this video is meant to tell you everything you
need to know to buy gold or silver without making expensive mistakes. Each part of this guide
will be marked as a chapter in the description so you'll be able to skip directly to that
section if you need to come back over time by the time we're done here you should be
able to confidently purchase gold and maybe even have a little fun with it. So let's get started.
The first thing you need to know is what to buy. if you're new to gold you should
focus on the most popular type of gold and here in the United States it's
government-backed bullion coins. Bullion coins are investment-grade coins that don't carry additional
numismatic or collector value, so this means you're paying for the gold content plus a reasonable
premium above the spot price of gold the US Mint produces two gold bullion coins each year - the American Gold Eagle and the American Buffalo the American Gold Eagle is the most popular gold
coin in the United States and it's second only to the South African Krugerrand worldwide. This coin
was introduced in 1986 and it comes in four sizes but for now we're going to focus on the one ounce
size. This coin contains one full ounce of gold if you notice the color is a little different
than the others here, that's because it's a 22 karat gold coin. That means that it's 91.67% gold and the remaining 8% is copper and silver alloy that's meant to harden
the coin and make it more resistant to wear but you'll see on the coin that the amount of
gold is printed directly on it, and it is one full ounce of gold you'll also see that it has a face
value of $50, so you could go into a store and buy $50 worth of goods
with it, but before you try that let me know because I'll buy it from you for 60. and the
next coin the U.S. Mint produces is the American Buffalo - this is a 24 karat gold coin that's
refined to 9999 fine gold so you'll see it has a lot more yellow color
like you'd expect from pure gold, but in most ways it's very similar to the American Gold Eagle.
It has the same face value of $50 it has the same outer dimensions... very similar coin.
Because it's pure gold, though, you will need to keep these coins in capsules, and you'll have to be
careful with how you handle them because gold will scratch and dent very easily. You do not want to
let your four-year-old nephew play with this coin so if you live in the United States
and you're going to buy one gold coin one of these two coins would be your best
choice. My recommendation for the new gold buyer would be the American Gold Eagle, but if you
feel you'd prefer the aesthetics of pure gold the Buffalo is a fantastic choice. And it's
probably my personal favorite the Buffalo was introduced in 2006 and both of these coins have been mostly unchanged since their introduction but the American Gold Eagle will actually
be going through a redesign later in 2021 now if you don't live in the United States or if
you wanted a non-U.S. gold coin for whatever reason there are plenty of other
popular government-backed options this Canadian Gold Maple Leaf was the first
pure gold bullion coin, and it's one of the most popular gold coins in the world. It was
introduced in 1979, and you'll only see slight changes to the coin over time. That includes the
purity changing from three nines fine to four nines fine but again, regardless of purity each
of these coins has one full ounce of gold content other popular coin choices would be the South
African Krugerrand and the Austrian Philharmonic and if you live in another country of course you'd
want to go with the local favorite, and these would include coins like the British Britannia, the
Australian Kangaroo, and the Chinese Gold Panda now gold bars are options as well but they
just aren't as popular in the United States but you can find popular bars produced by PAMP
Suisse, Valcambi, Perth Mint and the Royal Canadian Mint personally I'd recommend sticking to coins
for initial purchases just to keep us focused now the next thing you're going to need to know
is how much a gold coin should cost, and the price of gold is going to fluctuate, and it's going to
be different for three primary reasons first, the spot price of gold which is the value of gold
at the moment and the next is the premium which would be like the markup cost above that spot
price, and then finally you'll have sales tax which rarely applies to one ounce gold bullion coins, but
it might be a factor spot price at any given time can be found with a quick google search.
This is a Kitco chart, and it will show you the current standard price of gold as well as its performance
over time. The premium depends on what you're buying, where you're buying, and when you're buying, but
you'll find that premium is typically about 5% give or take on one ounce gold coins, so if
the spot price of gold is about $1,900 like it is in this chart ,then the price
of that coin might be around $2,000 but you'll see lots of coins with much higher
premiums, and if you're new to gold you should avoid them regardless of how pretty they are
or how collectible somebody tells you they might become here in the United States you
might find that a Gold Buffalo coin will cost $2,010 and a Gold Canadian Maple Leaf here might cost $1,980 now both of these coins have the exact same amount
of gold but the difference in premium is going to be based on popularity and in the event that
you were selling those very same coins you would get more back from the Gold Buffalo here in the
United States than you would for the Maple Leaf now I won't go into this in depth because this is
a buyer's guide rather than a seller's guide but in the event that you wanted to sell your gold
coins you could expect to get about spot price back and not much more, so you'll get a little
bit more for a Gold Buffalo than you will for a Canadian Maple Leaf, but again not a whole lot over
spot, so just keep that in mind if that seems a little bit scary, the other thing to keep in mind
is that the spot price of gold does fluctuate up and down, but over time it increases, and that
brings us to the next part which is where to buy the coins the two primary places you can
safely buy gold coins are your local coin shops (LCS) and online bullion dealers. And to find out if
you have a local coin shop in your area you can do a quick google search for "gold coin shops
in dallas texas" or wherever it is that you live you'll want to weed out the jewelers that come up
in that search and then whatever's left, give them a call a really easy qualifying question is
to ask them if they have any American Gold Eagles in stock and if they say yes, you've probably
found someone who deals with a lot of gold coins and once you've found a shop, you want to do a
little bit of research before you go into buy coin shops are not like car dealerships where
they walk you through the process, and the people who run them are a little bit of a mixed bag - they
aren't all going to be sweethearts what I do when I'm traveling is call the shop and I'll
ask them if I have a specific coin and then I'll ask them for the price so that might be like,
"hey do you have any one ounce American Gold Eagles in stock?" and if they say yes, fantastic well then
I'll ask, "how much do you get for them right now?" and that tells me what they have, but it
also tells me what they charge for premium your local coin shops will typically
have the best prices on gold coins and it's good to be familiar with them
just in case you ever want to sell but you should know that most of their coins will
be from the secondary market - what that means is they won't all be in perfect condition, and the
selection will be limited - that shouldn't turn you off from the local coin shop, it just means
that you're going to have to shop a little bit now online dealers will typically cost you a bit
more, but you'll be able to shop and compare and buy whatever you want, but you have to keep in mind
that having hundreds or thousands of options isn't always a good thing, so if you're shopping online
keep in mind that everything I mentioned earlier about gold coins applies here - you always want to
start with the most popular coins in your region now online dealers sell on their websites
and other marketplaces like eBay but if you aren't familiar with the sellers and you
want to be confident with your purchase I recommend going directly to the dealer's
website. There are dozens of options but for the sake of giving you
an easy place to start I'll give you two APMEX which is the screen that I was just showing
you and SD Bullion - APMEX is going to have the widest selection and the fastest shipping where
SD Bullion will have cheaper prices I have zero dogs in this fight - I'm certainly not being
paid by either of those to tell you to go shop there they just happen to be two options that I know
that you could start with. The biggest issue with buying online is that price is tiered depending on
your payment method, so paying with a credit card is going to cost you more in premium than
if you were to pay through a wire transfer or by sending them a check - that of course takes
longer, but regardless of whether you prefer to pay cash in person at a local coin shop, or you want
to go online and buy, I would check both the local coin shop and the online dealers before buying
from one or the other. Okay so up until now we've talked about one ounce gold coins, but if you'd
prefer to dip your toe into buying gold you have other options here as well. The primary sizes for
gold bullion are going to be the 1 oz coin, a 1/2 oz, a 1/4 oz and a 1/10 oz coin
the spot price is the same for each, so a 1/10 oz gold coin is worth 1/10 the spot price of
gold at the time, but the percentage of premium that you pay increases as you go down in size
so it costs more to accumulate an ounce of gold if you buy 10 1/10 oz gold coins rather than
a single one ounce gold coin. So that 1/10 oz American Gold Eagle right there might cost about
$230 while the 1 oz Eagle costs $2,000 so 10 of those would cost $2,300 but would be worth the same amount in terms of
gold content as that 1 oz gold coin now you'll typically be able to get some of
that premium back in a sale, but it'll cost you more to buy gold if you choose fractional
gold coins - there's just no way around that and whether you're new to gold or not, fractional
gold coins can still be really good options I've been buying gold for 12 years and
I still buy 1/4 oz gold coins these coins will probably cost around $530
again that's based on a $1,900 spot price and that's give or take, so it would
cost you more than a single 1 oz gold coin to accumulate that ounce with these coins as well,
but they're a price point decision $530 might be an easier purchase each time. If
you're trying to buy U.S. Mint coins in fractional sizes it's only the American Gold Eagle that
comes in the fractional sizes - you can't find American Gold Buffaloes in 1/2, 1/4 or 1/10 oz except from 2008 and that was a limited run, so they typically cost a lot more. So if you
want a fractional gold coin and you want that to be a 24 karat coin you're going to be looking
at other options like this Austrian Philharmonic which does come in all of those sizes just like
the Canadian Maple Leaf and a number of other popular government-backed coins as well.
Okay, so we've covered all of the hard stuff the last thing you need to know is how to store your gold.
When you walk out of the coin shop or you open your shipping box ,your coins are going to come in cheap flips, and if your coin is a 24 carat coin then you'll want it in a capsule like you see
here, and you can find these capsules in a lot of different places - you can find them at the local
coin shop, you can find them at online dealer sites, on Amazon, etc. You can also find tubes if you plan
to continue to buy - you put your capsules in the tubes you'll find [tubes] at all of the same places.
A quick tip on finding the right capsules... APMEX tells you on the product detail pages what
size capsule you'll need, and even if you aren't buying from them, it's easy enough to take that
info and pick them up from Amazon or wherever you want once you have your gold coins protected
in those capsules and tubes, it's best to keep them in a personal safe or a safe deposit box.
And that is it. Now there are a lot more details that I cover in individual videos, but that should
give you enough to be able to buy gold confidently if you have any questions feel free to drop them
in the comments. I do my best to respond and the YouTube community has all kinds of really smart
people, and they might jump in as well Thank you for watching - if you want to know more
about gold and precious metals, be sure to subscribe and if this video was helpful at all, please hit
the like button. Thanks and have a fantastic day!
