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The Ultimate Guide to Gold Buying: Everything You Need to Know

Samuel Higgins09 mins

The Ultimate Guide to Gold Buying: Everything You Need to Know

Gold has been a symbol of wealth and a store of value for centuries. Investors, collectors, and everyday buyers continue to seek out gold as a means of preserving wealth, hedging against inflation, and diversifying their investment portfolios. Whether you are looking to buy gold as an investment, for jewelry, or as a collectible, understanding the gold market is crucial. In this guide, we will explore everything you need to know about gold buying, including where to buy, how to assess quality, and investment opportunities such as RRSP gold in Canada.

Why Buy Gold?

Gold remains a highly sought-after asset due to its intrinsic value and financial stability. Here are some key reasons why people invest in gold:

  1. Hedge Against Inflation: Gold often retains its value over time, making it a good hedge against inflation.
  2. Portfolio Diversification: Investors use gold to balance the risks in their portfolios.
  3. Safe Haven Asset: During times of economic uncertainty, gold prices tend to rise as investors seek security.
  4. Tangible Asset: Unlike stocks or bonds, gold is a physical asset you can hold.
  5. Historical Value: Gold has been used as a store of wealth for centuries and continues to be a globally accepted form of value.

Types of Gold Investments

Before you make a purchase, it’s important to understand the different types of gold available on the market:

1. Physical Gold

  • Gold Bars: Available in various weights, from one gram to several kilograms, gold bars are a preferred choice for serious investors.
  • Gold Coins: Popular choices include the Canadian Gold Maple Leaf, American Gold Eagle, and South African Krugerrand.
  • Jewelry: While aesthetically pleasing, gold jewelry often carries a high markup due to craftsmanship and design.

2. Paper Gold

  • Gold ETFs (Exchange-Traded Funds): These funds track the price of gold and allow investors to trade shares without physically holding gold.
  • Gold Mining Stocks: Investing in gold mining companies can be profitable, but carries additional risks compared to physical gold.
  • Gold Futures and Options: These financial instruments allow traders to speculate on gold price movements without direct ownership.

Where to Buy Gold

When purchasing gold, ensuring authenticity and getting a fair price are critical. Here are the most common places to buy gold:

1. Reputable Dealers

Certified gold dealers offer authentic and high-quality gold products. Always check customer reviews and accreditations before making a purchase.

2. Banks and Financial Institutions

Many banks sell gold coins and bars, particularly in countries where gold is a common investment vehicle.

3. Online Marketplaces

E-commerce platforms and online gold dealers offer convenience, but buyers should exercise caution to avoid counterfeits or scams.

4. Jewelry Stores

Buying gold jewelry is common, but keep in mind that you may be paying a higher price due to design, craftsmanship, and brand name.

How to Determine Gold Quality

Understanding gold purity and pricing helps buyers make informed decisions.

1. Gold Purity

Gold purity is measured in karats (K) or fineness:

  • 24K (99.99% pure gold)
  • 22K (91.6% gold, commonly used in jewelry)
  • 18K (75% gold)
  • 14K (58.3% gold)

2. Hallmarks and Certifications

Gold products should have hallmarks indicating purity and origin. Look for certifications from reputable mints and assay offices.

3. Market Price and Premiums

Gold is priced based on the current market rate, but dealers add premiums for fabrication, shipping, and storage. Comparing prices from multiple sources ensures a fair deal.

Storing Your Gold

Once you purchase gold, proper storage is essential:

  • Home Safes: Ideal for small quantities, but ensure you have adequate security.
  • Bank Safety Deposit Boxes: Secure but can incur annual fees.
  • Professional Vaults: Specialized gold storage facilities offer high-security solutions.
  • Allocated Storage with Dealers: Some gold dealers provide insured storage options.

Investing in RRSP Gold in Canada

For Canadians looking to invest in gold through their retirement savings, RRSP-eligible gold is an attractive option. The Canadian government allows certain gold and precious metals to be held in a Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP). To qualify, the gold must meet the following criteria:

  • It must be at least 99.5% pure.
  • It must be in bar or coin form, from an approved refinery or mint.
  • It must be stored in a secure and approved facility.

Investing in RRSP gold provides tax advantages while allowing individuals to hold a tangible asset in their retirement portfolio. However, it’s crucial to work with a trusted financial advisor or precious metals dealer to ensure compliance with Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) regulations.

Avoiding Gold Buying Scams

With the high value of gold, scams are prevalent. Here are some common pitfalls and how to avoid them:

  1. Counterfeit Gold: Always buy from reputable dealers and verify authenticity.
  2. Overpriced Gold: Compare prices and avoid excessive premiums.
  3. Unverified Sellers: Be wary of sellers without verifiable credentials or reviews.
  4. “Too Good to Be True” Deals: If the price seems too low, it’s likely a scam.
  5. Lack of Documentation: Ensure you receive a receipt, assay certificate, and proof of authenticity.

Final Thoughts

Gold buying can be a rewarding investment and a means of preserving wealth if done correctly. Whether you are acquiring gold for investment, collection, or personal enjoyment, understanding purity, market prices, and storage options is key to making smart purchasing decisions.

For Canadian investors, RRSP gold offers a unique way to integrate gold into a retirement portfolio while enjoying tax benefits. By staying informed and choosing reputable dealers, you can safely and confidently invest in gold to secure your financial future.…

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Benefits of a Precious Metals IRA

Samuel Higgins03 mins

Tax Advantages

Buying gold and silver in a retirement account allows you to enjoy tax savings. With a traditional Gold IRA (or Silver IRA), you receive an upfront benefit of tax deferral when you contribute. Your assets then grow tax-deferred. You can expect to pay regular income tax on your withdrawals in retirement.

With a Roth version of a precious metals retirement account, you lose the upfront benefit of tax deferral but enjoy tax-free withdrawals in retirement. Both options allow you to save on taxes, now or later.

Diversification

Adding gold or silver to your IRA can help hedge your overall retirement savings. Precious metals tend to move independently of the dollar and the broader economy. Especially in times of financial or geopolitical uncertainty, gold has usually retained its value or increased in value relative to other assets. This can stabilize your overall retirement savings and smooth out your returns. In Canada, it is worthy of note that they have an RRSP/TFSA program that is very similar.

Inflation Protection

If you are like most Americans, you have most of your income and assets denominated in the U.S. dollar. This makes you vulnerable to a loss of purchasing power as more dollars are printed, triggering inflationary periods. Diversifying with a precious metals retirement account can help mitigate damage to your net worth from a significant decline in the dollar. Because gold can not be printed out of thin air and is, therefore, a stored value that is relatively immune to inflation, it can help protect your purchasing power and mitigate inflation risks.

Control

With a self-directed Precious Metals IRA, you maintain control. You direct all buy and sell actions in your account. Also, with Preserve Gold, you get our Buyback Policy, which can provide you with liquidity if and when you need it without additional fees.…

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What is a Gold IRA?

Samuel Higgins03 mins

A gold IRA is an individual retirement investment account in which some percentage of its allocation is in real gold. In order to classify as a gold IRA, these accounts cannot hold paper-based gold assets alone (i.e., mining stocks or ETFs)—rather, they must include physical bullion such as gold bars or sovereign-minted coins.

Even an IRA that allocates a mere 5% to gold bullion and the remaining 95% to stocks and bonds meets the criteria of a gold IRA. Simply put, any IRA is a gold IRA as long as some share of its value consists of physical gold assets.

The Purpose of a Gold IRA

Like all IRAs, gold IRAs provide special tax benefits for their owners. Traditional gold IRAs consist of pre-tax assets for which taxation is deferred until withdrawal, whereas Roth IRAs are made up of after-tax assets which grow tax-free.

Assets held within a Roth IRA are free from long-term capital gains taxes, whereas traditional IRAs are deducted upon deposit but taxed at withdrawal.

These tax benefits especially tempt precious metals investors. This is because investors typically hold gold and silver assets long-term and can accrue a large tax liability at the time of sale. Thus, gold IRAs allow investors to contribute to their retirement nest egg on a tax-free basis while diversifying with alternative assets that can help manage risk.

Diversify your retirement with Preserve Gold’s Precious Metals IRA.

We have thoroughly vetted IRA custodians and storage facilities throughout North America to provide the best Precious Metals IRA options for all our clients. A Precious Metals IRA allows you to utilize the tax savings of a retirement account while holding physical gold, silver, platinum, and palladium in your account. A self-directed IRA allows you to take control of your retirement with the diversification features of tangible gold and silver while maintaining the benefits of tax deferment.

Eligible Accounts

Eligible accounts include:

  • Traditional IRA
  • Roth IRA
  • Traditional 401(k)
  • Roth 401(k)
  • Thrift Savings Plan (TSP)
  • 403(b)
  • 457(b)
  • Simplified Employee Pension (SEP)
  • Savings Incentive Match Plan for Employees of Small Employers (SIMPLE)
  • Tax-Sheltered Annuity (TSA)
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Precious Metals Depository and IRA Custodian

Samuel Higgins04 mins

We work with third-party precious metals IRA custodians to provide IRA custodial services for our clients. We select our preferred providers based on their proven track record in the precious metals industry, and accessible customer service for client accounts.

Your IRA-eligible precious metals will be securely stored at your depository of choice. To promote client security and satisfaction, we work with the following precious metals depositories for your IRA storage needs.

IRS Approved Gold and Silver

The Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 allows individuals to hold precious metals within their retirement accounts.

The Act sets some restrictions:

  • Only a select few precious metals – gold, silver, platinum, and palladium – are allowed.
  • The IRS approved only bullion, coins, bars, and rounds with additional requirements around the purity of those metals. You cannot hold collectables. We have a large selection of IRA-eligible coins and bars for you to choose from.
  • Precious metals must be managed by an IRS-approved custodian and stored with an approved depository, not the IRA owner. Preserve partners only with vetted custodians and depositories to make it simple and secure for you.

Distributions of Precious Metals IRAs work the same as any other IRA:

  • You must take minimum distributions after you turn 72, and there may be penalties if you take distributions before age 59.5
  • You can liquidate your IRA metals for cash or take physical possession of them; however, this is counted as an IRA distribution.
  • Risk Differentiation
  • You must diversify both the kinds of risks you take on and the kinds of assets you invest in if you want to genuinely diversify your portfolio. There are five predominant forms of risk that investors must be aware of:
  • Equity Risk (Equity Beta): A stock’s volatility relative to the market.
  • Interest Rate Risk (Duration): The risk of a change in the federal funds rate changing the value of a bond or variable-rate instrument, such as an annuity.
  • Credit Risk (Spread Duration): Potential losses incurred by defaulting or failure to repay one’s debt obligations.
  • Inflation/Currency Risk: The risk of taking a loss on a currency exchange rate.
  • Momentum: Intra-day acceleration of a security’s value due to derivatives trading.
  • For instance, a bond-heavy portfolio is highly exposed to interest rate risk. Gold bullion, on the other hand, does not carry any interest rate risk. Therefore, a bond-heavy portfolio could be insulated from risk by allocating some of its value in gold.
  • The same goes for stocks, which are exposed to credit risk. Gold bullion is free from credit risk and, therefore, makes for a suitable complement to a stock-heavy investment account.
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Diversification of a Gold IRA

Samuel Higgins03 mins

Perhaps the main advantage of a gold IRA is that it provides unique risk management capabilities for retirement investors. As we near our target retirement date, we must manage risk accordingly. In particular, it’s important to reduce the chances of losing our financial resources when we need them the most—during retirement.

A simple stock market downturn or overnight sell-off could delay your retirement by years if you’re overexposed to stock market volatility. Knowing this, many investors nearing retirement choose to diversify their holdings to minimize their exposure to stock market risk.

The underlying premise is that gold has a low correlation (about ~0.25) to the stock market. Therefore, it functions as an extremely useful hedge against stock market volatility. Statistically, gold bullion markets stand strong when the stock market rises or falls in value, thereby fortifying an investor’s portfolio from erratic swings.

Why Gold?

Gold has a long history as an investment and, more than that, as a reliable store of value. Dating back to 550 BC during the reign of King Croesus in modern-day Turkey, gold has been used to mint official coins and serve as a medium of exchange.

Given gold’s unique properties as a scarce, ductile, reflective, brilliant, and malleable metal, it has long been considered a prized commodity throughout the world. On top of that, its thermal and electric conductivity make it highly coveted as a modern industrial asset.

For retail investors, gold has come to be regarded as a disaster hedge. When the U.S. stock market experiences sustained downturns, the spot price of gold tends to perform positively.…

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What Is A Home Storage Gold IRA? 

Samuel Higgins03 mins

Precious metals IRAs are typically self-directed IRAs, where the custodian allows you to store a broad range of precious metals investments. This includes storage options for IRS-approved coins and bars in gold, silver, platinum, and palladium.

As the name suggests, a home storage gold IRA allows you to invest in gold and other precious metals and store them at home. Unlike a traditional precious metals IRA account, where the assets are stored in a depository, this option lets you store your physical assets at home.

Is A Home Storage Gold IRA Legal ?

A simple answer to this is ‘No.’ In fact, the IRS has specific criteria for what they deem “acceptable storage” of precious metals within an IRA. If the IRS determines that your chosen gold IRA storage method doesn’t meet their standards, you could potentially face substantial tax penalties.

No need to worry if you’re unfamiliar with acceptable storage options according to IRS regulations. We will delve into this topic later on.

Managing risk in this way is critical to long-term success as a risk-averse investor. Unless you can diversify the categories of risk to which you expose your wealth, you run the risk of taking significant losses due to market events that can disrupt your retirement plans.

The Custodian Requirement

A Gold IRA custodian is a financial entity that holds and protects the physical gold in your retirement account (IRA). These custodians help you open a gold IRA investment account while ensuring that your gold investment and its storage comply with Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regulations.

Your gold IRA custodian will help ensure proper maintenance and management of your gold assets, handling all the work for you while you own gold in your IRA account. This is especially beneficial compared to owning gold in self-custody, where you would have to go through the hassle of managing, securing, insuring and maintaining your assets.

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