Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 515 posts

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#121

Post by pjc50 »

noduerme wrote: post #111
e63f67dd-065b wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can see it happening right now in Argentina: the local currency is worthless, and people are flocking to ... US Dollars. Not gold, not bitcoins, but good old benjamins. So gold isn't even a good inflation hedge: if you walked the streets of a failing economy (pick one: Argentina, Venezuela, Sri Lanka, there's plenty more) and tried to exchange gold for goods, you're not gonna get far (and will probably get mugged…

Not exactly. I just sent this link to my (Argentine) friends with a different observation. My observation was: The United States is starting to look like Argentina. You must understand: Most Americans are not accustomed to shoving a third party currency under their mattress, or buying physical gold. The phenomenon of hyperinflation is foreign to them, and there's a steep learning curve. The actual significance of thi…

Argentina has 100% annual inflation and going up while the US has less than 10% and going down. The USD is not going anywhere spectacular, because there is no more stable country to flee to.

The one thing that can reliably trigger inflation in almost any country is oil/gas shortages on the global market, and you can't hedge that with precious metals nor store a 20 year supply in your house.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#122

Post by nwiswell »

This is strange, apparently they're selling at a significant loss?

Current online price, $1930. Spot gold, $1872.59. So a little less than a $58 premium.

My credit card gives me 2% back, and my Costco membership 2% on top of that, for a total of 4%. I assume that Costco probably pays a bit more than 2% for card processing, and of course they're the ones actually paying me the 2% back from the membership.

So that's at least 4%, not including the minter's profits, shipping and security costs, warehouse worker wages and overhead, insurance, shrinkage, etc, which are surely at least a few percent more of the sales price.

But just 4% of $1930 is $77, meaning I would recognize a hypothetical profit in an immediate spot sale of $77 - $58 = $19 per bar. Costco's actual loss is certainly more than that, realistically probably more like $50+ per bar, or most likely $100+ per member.

Weird. The article mentions preppers, I guess they really want them as members.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#124

Post by didntcheck »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #86
cpursley wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_2_of_the_Canadian_Ch...

That's the rights, I'm asking about the supporting. I heard about freezes for people doing the protesting (including organizing). But that's an extremely different thing from supporting the free speech rights of the protesters.

OK, the government debanked people for organizing peaceful protests against them. That's hardly reassuring

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#125

Post by pjc50 »

qp11 wrote: post #47
ggm wrote: post #8

I'd love to see an economists take on the value to a consumer of holding gold in this form, at the price. Investment gold is usually kept in vault, and you trade ownership arms length. Direct gold ownership is rife with risks: fineness, substitutions and overpriced purchase. Yes, you can always sell at a mall gold trader but that's way way off market price. So it's an inflation hedge with a lot of cost and risk and d…

In most of the under developed world were financial systems are unstable/dont control the economy, they dont convert gold into local currency. They use it as currency. "You want that cow, give me that nose ring". Ofcourse in the "developed world" the problem is, one fuckhead will show up, who wants to own all the cows, for no logically reason other than he just has too. Naturally gold wont work.

Quite a lot of the "less developed" world has person to person mobile payment systems such as M-Pesa.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#126

Post by netcruiser »

philwelch wrote: post #42
ggm wrote: post #8

I'd love to see an economists take on the value to a consumer of holding gold in this form, at the price. Investment gold is usually kept in vault, and you trade ownership arms length. Direct gold ownership is rife with risks: fineness, substitutions and overpriced purchase. Yes, you can always sell at a mall gold trader but that's way way off market price. So it's an inflation hedge with a lot of cost and risk and d…

When I looked into this, the consensus seemed to be that the best form of gold, if you want to physically hold it yourself, is gold coins minted by reputable national mints. American Gold Eagles, South Africa Krugerrands, etc. These trade at close to spot. And a 1 oz Krugerrand or Gold Eagle is about $20,000. If you can afford enough volume of those that it’s difficult to secure them, you can afford to secure them.

It's $2,000, not $20,0000 (I assume USD). Gold coins are pretty easy to come by in my experience.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#127

Post by [deleted] »

nwiswell wrote: post #122

This is strange, apparently they're selling at a significant loss? Current online price, $1930. Spot gold, $1872.59. So a little less than a $58 premium. My credit card gives me 2% back, and my Costco membership 2% on top of that, for a total of 4%. I assume that Costco probably pays a bit more than 2% for card processing, and of course they're the ones actually paying me the 2% back from the membership. So that's at…

[deleted]

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#128

Post by bondarchuk »

baron816 wrote: post #13
ggm wrote: post #8

I'd love to see an economists take on the value to a consumer of holding gold in this form, at the price. Investment gold is usually kept in vault, and you trade ownership arms length. Direct gold ownership is rife with risks: fineness, substitutions and overpriced purchase. Yes, you can always sell at a mall gold trader but that's way way off market price. So it's an inflation hedge with a lot of cost and risk and d…

I’m not sure an economist (a mainstream economist) would really care that much about an individual holding gold. Maybe there’s an interesting behavioral question about why people become so paranoid about the value of the dollar when it’s proven to be so incredibly stable (yes, even with the recent spike in inflation—it’s nothing close to hyperinflation). But people going to Costco and buying gold doesn’t have an effe…

>I’m not sure an economist (a mainstream economist) would really care that much about an individual holding gold.

Roosevelt seemed to care quite a bit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102

Apparently this lasted until 1974 (not sure about the details though, I always hear about the executive order in 1933 but never about the impossibility of owning gold between 1933 and 1974 - but that's what the articles seem to say) so a lot of mainstream economists have at least implicitly agreed.

https://www.nytimes.com/1974/08/15/archives/bill-signed-to-a...

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#129

Post by JumpCrisscross »

daymanstep wrote: post #118
Beijinger wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Direct gold ownership is rife with risks" Every kind of ownership comes with "risks". It is stupidity not to own gold "directly". Buying a gold ETF is likely a bad idea like having your cryptocurrencies not under personal control. Precious metals ETF charge a yearly fee. A buddy of mine once developed a financial instrument, where the ETF really owns the metal and does not mimic its spot price but also pays a divide…

Where does the money come from for the dividend? If company profit or gold price goes down does the dividend become negative?

> Where does the money come from for the dividend?

They loan it out.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#130

Post by frozenport »

Beijinger wrote: post #120
daymanstep wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does the money come from for the dividend? If company profit or gold price goes down does the dividend become negative?

Nope. But please understand that I can't elaborate this since I still think it is a nice idea. But I give you a hint: I talked about precious metals, not gold. :-)

If you heat it up does it expand in volume?
Post reply on HN