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There's A Gold-Dispensing ATM on West 57th Street

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Re: There's A Gold-Dispensing ATM on West 57th Street

#71
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what my father did for my brother and I as kids. Every time one of us lost a tooth, we got a silver American Eagle. Then we'd have to put it into a protective sleeve and look up its details in a coin book we had in the house. My brother and I would spend hours looking over every detail of those coins (there's not a lot to do when you're six and living in Wyoming). I always wondered where they came from until I…

I remember one night after I lost a tooth where I tried to barricade my bedroom door in order to test if the tooth fairy was real. My parents didn't approve.

Ever the scientist!

Re: There's A Gold-Dispensing ATM on West 57th Street

#72
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People go through a lot of cash in NYC. Most people I know pull $200 at a time, which is pretty close to that.

I actually don't understand people who regularly use atms. If you have access to a bank account then it's not too difficult to get a credit card and in terms of security a CC is much easier to control than a bunch of little pieces of paper. If the plastic gets stolen or lost you can just cancel it and lose nothing except time (and waiting for a new card to arrive) while with cash you lose it or it gets stolen -- it's…

The reason I specified NYC is that it (along with other large cities) contains a number of small businesses that don't take credit cards. Your suggestions sounds good in practice, but there are a number of services I would lose or have to travel significantly farther for were I to refuse to carry cash. Cash is also the easiest way to split checks (most restaurants won't split checks more than N ways, for some N <= 3) and I frequently eat out in large groups.

Re: There's A Gold-Dispensing ATM on West 57th Street

#73
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what my father did for my brother and I as kids. Every time one of us lost a tooth, we got a silver American Eagle. Then we'd have to put it into a protective sleeve and look up its details in a coin book we had in the house. My brother and I would spend hours looking over every detail of those coins (there's not a lot to do when you're six and living in Wyoming). I always wondered where they came from until I…

I remember one night after I lost a tooth where I tried to barricade my bedroom door in order to test if the tooth fairy was real. My parents didn't approve.

Ah, but if you do that of _course_ the fairies won't be able to find you. They come down the chimney and then listen for the sound of a recently fallen tooth. With the door closed they'd not be able to hear it.

;)

Re: There's A Gold-Dispensing ATM on West 57th Street

#74

Saw this a little while back, the novelty is fun, but the prices are really, really high. Silver spot right now is ~$19/oz and they're selling it for $88, a 360%+ markup (granted this is a coin vs a bar). Gold spot is ~$1260/oz, and their 1oz is $1367, 8.5% markup, their 10g is $1389/oz, a 10% markup. If you were interested in gold, you could get from APMEX for $1,336.83/oz credit, or less for cash. Or from a nice ma…

Hmm, the picture showed ASEs at $27 which is a touch pricey (single ASEs you can probably pick up for spot + $5-10).

Re: There's A Gold-Dispensing ATM on West 57th Street

#75
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People go through a lot of cash in NYC. Most people I know pull $200 at a time, which is pretty close to that.

I actually don't understand people who regularly use atms. If you have access to a bank account then it's not too difficult to get a credit card and in terms of security a CC is much easier to control than a bunch of little pieces of paper. If the plastic gets stolen or lost you can just cancel it and lose nothing except time (and waiting for a new card to arrive) while with cash you lose it or it gets stolen -- it's…

A good number of popular small restaurants in NYC are cash-only. And then there's splitting the bill with large groups, where you don't want to (or can't) add yet another card to the pile, especially if you're not splitting evenly. Also, if you drive, gas stations charge 5-10% more for credit cards.

Re: There's A Gold-Dispensing ATM on West 57th Street

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goldbugs like anonymity. You know, in case Obama decides to pull an FDR and confiscate all their precious Au.

Except you have to use an ATM debit card in the machine. If you wanted anonymity or lack of traceability, I think you'd rather buy with cash, probably using an actual in-person transaction. (I don't know if the US or other countries require registering identity of people buying gold in person in cash? I don't think the US does).

Any cash purchase (of anything, not gold in particular) over $10,000 requires submitting a form to the treasury. Not that that's easy to reliably enforce.

Re: There's A Gold-Dispensing ATM on West 57th Street

#77
post #20

Someone in the comments: "what if someone files a chargeback on the card?". Any thoughts on this? By using the machine you've moved from a reversible transaction to an ireversible transaction. It looks ripe for scammers to abuse. At least at a counter they'd have your face on cam, but with this they don't.

They don't accept credit cards, only debit cards. So it has the same properties as a normal ATM. You can't take cash out of an ATM and then issue a chargeback.

Re: There's A Gold-Dispensing ATM on West 57th Street

#78
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that different than any asset, stock, bond, Bitcoin? The broker always gets a cut.

Physical precious metals have some of the worst spreads/fees and friction involved buying and selling compared to other assets. Stocks: $5 flat fee per trade is typical, index funds charge as low as 0.05% / year. Bonds: Cheap bond index funds charge 0.1% to 0.3% / year. Buying bonds directly from the treasury carries no fees. Bitcoin: 0.20-1% fee is typical when purchased online The only common asset class that is wo…

"Physical precious metals have some of the worst spreads/fees"

Here is a site that buys 1 ounce gold bars for $10 below the current spot price and sells them for 30 above. that is 0.8% spread on the side a slightly over 2% on the buy side.

http://www.goldeneaglecoin.com/topProducts

Are there bad vendors out there, sure, but they are in every market. Look at Bitcon ATM's some of those charge fees amounting to 10%

Re: There's A Gold-Dispensing ATM on West 57th Street

#79
post #64
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gee, I got U.S. quarters ($0.25) as a kid.

same, if I was lucky it was a half dollar.

You must always take inflation into account in these comparisons.

$0.25 in 1970 has equivalent purchasing power of 1.48$ right now.

And $0.50 in 1985 matches to pretty much exact $1 right now.

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