Where to buy physical gold?

Possible; I dont touch the physical stuff :wink:

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I used proaurum.ch last time, but that was a long time ago.
Bid/Ask spreads are gigantic.

Check out Sincona AG, you can buy/sell physical bars there. You can also rent deposit box with them (200chf per annum) and store it there outside of the banking system, and with possibility to insure it as well.

If you want to go big, another place I use is Bullion Vault, especially good for Silver as they store it in bonded warehouses and you don’t have to pay VAT for it when buying or selling.

A colleague of mine buys at ZKB. I believe you need to be a customer (have an account with them) to be able to buy physical. He needs to pre book the purchase so they can order it and have it ready for him to pick up.

I bought some with UBS long ago (meaning around 2012). Since 2 years they closed their gold window.

Somehow I miss a few steps in this overall process.

So, you buy physical gold, which is either delivered to you at home, or you pick it up at some place.

Then you take it to your bank and put it in a vault.

All this while hoping that the Beagle Boys don’t rob you somewhere along the way?

A bit risky, isn’t it?

well you can always burry it in your garden…

Either you go pick it up or have it delivered by post, or you have from the beginning the intention of let it be stored on a bank vault (which is very costly), then of course you don’t need to bring it home.

This is exactly the issue with physical metal: how do you store it. You can say: total control vs risk of loss by burglary

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Bank vaults aren’t necessarily that costly. My bank charges 50 francs per year for a safe capable of holding a heck of a lot of kilo bars. I would dare to say that holding physical gold in a bank safe deposit box for 50 francs per year can in some cases work out cheaper than investing in gold derivatives, ETFs, futures, etc. for long-term gold investments. You have to calculate the break-even point. If you already have secure storage at home, that’s obviously the cheapest.

Bid-ask spreads are a much more important factor for physical gold investments, in my opinion. If you save say, 500 or 1000 francs by getting a better deal on bullion, that’s the cost of X years safe deposit box rental right there.

Btw. You can find a safe deposit box price comparison (primarily major banks) here: https://www.moneyland.ch/en/swiss-safe-deposit-boxes-comparison

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Daniel, what is the name of the bank? Do they record what you have in a vault or not?

No they don’t. They give you the box and leave you alone with it. Nobody knows what is in these safes.

I could not find anything about forbidden items but I might have missed it. It would seem reasonable to forbid explosives for example.

However, they cannot enforce it. They don’t have access to the content as you need two keys and you are with them and the box as soon as it is open.

Fortunately, “l’argent n’a pas d’odeur” :grin: nor has the gold, nor the paper certificates.

I think that your gold in there is not insured though. If something get stolen you are not insured.

That is absolutely right, nothing is insured. It is logical given that there are no inventories.

Still is something to mention. Not that there is a huge risk involved.

Old-style Breakins (digging tunnels etc. https://www.nzz.ch/panorama/heisse-spur-nach-tunnelraub-1.17954460 ) in Swiss Bank safes are rare, but when new technology comes into the game - take care!
https://www.blick.ch/schweiz/basel/auch-das-noch-22-schliessfaecher-von-basler-raiffeisen-bank-gepluendert-id8093554.html

The gold that is stored in your bank account, how do you sell it later? is it an easy process?

In the case of precious metal account, you can sell gold from your account balance anytime, and generally any portion of your balance. Just instruct your bank. The money goes into the linked CHF bank account.

If you store gold bullion in a safe deposit box, you’ll have to sell it to a dealer (a bank, for example) or to a private individual or company. Dealers are the easiest option. You just go there with your bullion, they check it for integrity and then buy. Only problem is, they generally have pretty rotten bid prices for bullion…like 10% or event 20% below spot. I would have to do some research to see which dealer offers the best bids. If you can find a person or company that will give you the spot price or higher that’s obviously a much better option, assuming it’s a trustworthy entity. In reality you should even be able to charge slightly above spot and still be competitive compared to the dealers with their big markups.

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Is a precious metal account an ETF? Because I want to stay away from ETFs and focus on Physical gold.

No, it’s just an account provided by the bank. There are gold ETFs as well, but these are two different things.

Precious metal accounts are not ETFs nor physical gold. They are book money like all other bank account balances.

For physical gold your options are bullion in a safe (or safe deposit box) or bullion in a gold pool (allocated or unallocated gold certificates).

Bullion in a bonded warehouse can be a sensible option for metals with VAT, but no benefit for gold.

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