Protecting Your Gold Bullion Investment

You can read our full gold guide here and browse all of our individual gold advice articles here. 

We’re often contacted by new customers who are wary about investing and this is perfectly natural. They have their hard earned money, whether it is hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands, and they want to make sure they are spending it wisely. If we get quizzed about why they should buy from us, we point them in the direction of our financial details and tell them about us. We’ve been around a long time (50 years) and have many repeat customers from around the world. We won’t try to convince them to purchase from us though. Only you can decide where you want to invest your money, and we won’t pressure you into purchasing from us. Here you can see a few of the issues that affect investors. This information should help you make your purchase with more knowledge about what to be wary of.

Fakes and forgeries - How do you know if the coin you’ve bought is a fake or forgery? After 50 years of dealing in numismatics, we are always coming across people who believe their coin is genuine. Our advice? Use a reputable dealer, it’s that simple. Someone that has a good reputation and has been around a while. That way you can feel safe in the knowledge that you can always return back to the same dealer in the future. Various different metals and alloys are used to create fake or counterfeit gold coins, depending on the reason for, and nature of, the particular fake. We use a number of methods to detect a fake or forgery. The alloy we see most frequently used for fake gold coins is substandard gold, for example fake sovereigns are made in the middle east and marked 21ct (but in Arabic), as opposed to 22ct gold. We also see sovereigns which appear to be around 18 to 20 carat gold, as well as some made of copper or bronze.

New issues - We don’t recommend buying new commemorative coin issues as an investment, due to the high premiums added to the price. These are usually far better value when bought on the secondary market. Then they are bought and sold at their true intrinsic value. Our advice on
these is to wait a couple of years until demand has levelled off before buying them. 

Bait and switch - This is a boiler room style scam, that advertises bullion at competitive prices, then salespeople persuade callers to buy ‘collectable coins’ at a highly marked up price. They offer ‘advice’ such as “the coins are a better investment than bullion” or “coins can’t be confiscated but bullion can”. Our advice? Buy from a reputable dealer, one who you can visit or get in touch with, one who has been around for a long time and will be there when you wish to sell back to them. If a dealer won’t purchase back then it may be that they are selling products
for over-inflated prices. Not purchasing from you means they don’t have to deal with you when you realise your investment wasn’t so good after all. More often than not, it’s left up to the reputable dealers to disappoint you by explaining the true value of your coins.

You may wish to view all of our articles on our gold guide.