David Levenstein of LakeshoreTrading gives his viewpoint and shares some of the more common scams in the gold market at the moment and how best to avoid them.  His message is very simple:

“If a deal looks too good to believe, it probably is worse than you can imagine, and when adding precious metals to your investment portfolio stick with bullion bars and coins.”

One other comment stands out and should be noted:

“A numismatic coin is a collectors coin that has value in excess of its metal content because it is historical or rare. But, you cannot create rarity or claim an item to be rare simply because you restrict the quantity being minted. Rarity is determined by a coins surviving population from the original mintage, and not because you say it is.  However, if you are a collector, then this is a different matter.  A collector might purchase a rare coin for many multiples of the value of the metal it contains, but for the average investor numismatic coins and medallions are on a par with rare stamps, art, ceramics etc.  You must also bear in mind that in most instances it is not all that easy to liquidate numismatic coins and in contrast most bullion coins are easy to sell anywhere in the world.”

His full independent viewpoint can be found on Mineweb.

Tags: bullion, Coins, gold, numismatic, rare, scams