Ready to Buy Gold?

If you're ready to buy gold, you might be wondering the best way to do it and where you can get the best prices. This page will show you how professionals have created a digital market that lets you buy and trade gold cheaply and safely. Additionally, you'll discover some of the other ways you can buy gold, such as gold bars and coins, certificates, mining stocks, and gold futures.

Gold Bars, Good Delivery, and the Professional Gold Market

Participants in the professional bullion market — such as government agencies, gold dealers, the occasional big investment firm, refiners, and bullion banks — are the ones who enjoy the competitive gold prices you see online and published in papers. The professional bullion market deals only with Good Delivery bars, which meet the standards set forth by the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA). These bars must fulfill certain rules and regulations in weight, dimensions, fineness, and marks to be considered Good Delivery bars. These rules are designed to assure quality control in the production of precious metal bars.

Fine Gold Is Nearly 100 Percent Pure Gold

Another aspect that sets Good Delivery bars apart from other gold bars is that they're cast by a small group of precious metal refiners that have received accreditation from the professional bullion trading community. These bars are accurately assayed so you know they're always 99.5 percent pure gold or better. As a result, everyone who trades on the professional bullion market knows he or she will never be paying for impurities in the gold.

Retain High Bullion Integrity in a Professional Vault

Good Delivery bars enjoy this high integrity because they're never in private possession. From the day they're manufactured, they're stored in bullion vaults the local gold trading community recognizes and monitors. If these bars are ever moved, only accredited bullion couriers can transport them. Additionally, the gold community keeps a careful record of where the bars go to prove they're always in continuous and trusted storage. This process guarantees the integrity of the gold bars in a way that storing them at home or in a safety deposit box can't provide.

If you've never seen a Good Delivery bar before, you might be surprised at its size. These bars are large, usually weighing 400 troy ounces, which equals 12.4 kilograms or 27.4 pounds. At today's gold price of about $1,500 an ounce, each bar costs $600,000. However, having enough money to purchase a bar is only half the problem.

Once you own a bar, you still need to store it, so you'll need a relationship with a bullion vault that's formally recognized by the gold community. If you don't have this, your gold will lose its Good Delivery status, which means you won't be able to sell it at the full price easily.

Unfortunately, because of their nature, these vaults are extra-cautious, and the general public usually has a hard time doing business with them. Even if you take the significant amount of time, effort, and money that's required to set up an account with one of these vaults, you'll discover that meeting the minimum monthly storage fees would require you to purchase about 15 bars of gold.

It's because of these barriers that private users have such a hard time entering the professional bullion market.

Direct Access to the Best Gold Prices

OneGold has set out to change all of this. When you work with OneGold, you're able to own gold from the professional market no matter where you're located and in any quantity.

All gold at OneGold is pooled, allocated gold. As a result, when you're ready to sell your gold, you know the weight and purity of your gold is trustworthy and guaranteed by OneGold, because it has never left secure storage.

Many people who buy gold don't think about how important gold integrity is when they want to sell it. However, this aspect is crucial. Plenty of gold investors lose money when they discover lower-integrity gold doesn't get the same spot price when they hand it back over the counter. When you work with OneGold, you'll enjoy low cost, easy transactions, and low storage fees.

Not only can you start buying your gold in any increment, but you'll also enjoy low storage charges: OneGold charges just 0.12 percent for gold storage. That puts the storage fees charged by OneGold below those charged by retail banks and less than yearly fees charged by most gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Save Money With Our Gold Exchange

Another way OneGold customers save money is by eliminating the middleman. With OneGold, you don't have to worry about arranging for expensive and insured courier delivery. The gold that you purchase is already in a vault, which is exactly where you want it. If you decide to sell and take possession, you can easily choose from a wide selection of APMEX products which will be delivered the next day.

Your Safety and Security Assured

At OneGold, your gold is your property. You simply use OneGold to store your gold at the Royal Canadian Mint (RCM) on in the United States via a private secure facility. This helps you stay away from the risks of an uncertain financial system. Unlike what may happen with investment products, a company's financial failure won't deny you your gold. In fact, the Canadian government wholly owns the RCM. This means that in the unlikely event the RCM can't fulfill its obligations to its customers, the Canadian government takes over the obligation and compensates customers accordingly.

Online security is very important at OneGold. That's why every account login requires two-factor authentication. To do so, you need to use either the registered mobile phone that was set up during the account creation or a two-factor authentication app.

This combination of value, transparency, accessibility, and safety has made OneGold a top option for providing direct gold ownership service.

Important Concerns When Buying Gold

Although many gold buyers don't realize it, one of the most important aspects for the safe and orderly purchase of gold is the ability to take delivery yet avoid immediate possession. At the same time, you want to ensure you can take possession later if necessary.

Delivery

Delivery, which is also occasionally called a settlement, occurs when you become the owner of your gold. Don't mistake delivery for private possession, however. Delivery is important for your safety because it's when you're no longer a balance sheet creditor of the gold seller. But it's not important that you take the delivery into your actual possession. In fact, private possession of your gold is typically discouraged.

Possession

Although many gold owners want actual possession of their gold, they don't consider the disadvantages. Even though you might get plenty of comfort from holding a gold bar in your hands, you'll quickly learn that trying to sell gold that has been in your physical possession is difficult and comes with significant costs.

Keeping gold in your possession comes with other drawbacks. You don't have complete assurance that the last person who owned the gold didn't switch it out for a fake product. If you decide to sell the gold, you have to do so at a steep discount.

Gold that's in your physical possession is also harder to insure because insurance fraud with gold bars is high. Scam artists will often try to ensure gold bars, falsely declare they were stolen, and then have insurers pay a claim. Unfortunately, this means honest people have a hard time insuring their gold. However, insurers know OneGold is safe, so it's easier for our company to get insurance.

If you're purchasing your gold to keep you and your family safe during a crisis and you take possession of it during that crisis, you'll find it nearly impossible to spend. In fact, even if you tried to pay for something with a gold coin right now, you'd have a difficult time finding anyone to take it.

That's because in today's society, gold isn't a currency and you can't use it to buy anything. While some people believe gold could be used as currency during a crisis, recent examples where the currency has broken down — such as in Argentina, Russia, and Iraq — have shown that gold didn't emerge as a currency.

While gold was sometimes used as currency in very rich societies, like Ancient Athens, industrialized Europe, and the United States until the 1930s, if you try using it in a country that's experiencing a financial meltdown, you'll have to stay with small quantities, and you might end up selling it at a large discount.

For gold investment, you have a better alternative. Rather than keep gold in your possession, it's more effective to have it stored in a country that has sound finances, political stability, high living standards, good rules of law, and a pleasant relationship with other countries. This is why vaults in Canada and the United States are ideal locations.

For these reasons, you should take actual possession of your gold only when an extreme emergency makes it necessary. Until then, you can take delivery of your gold in a professional vault. It will be more secure than it would be a safe deposit box, it will be cheaper to insure, and you won't have to worry about it losing value.

Delivery at OneGold

Understanding the process behind delivery is an important part of buying gold. Since your gold is already in a vault, the moment you make a deal, you get outright ownership of your gold. Your gold doesn't appear on the balance sheet of your custodian, and liquidators can't make a claim on your gold.

With most investments, you're the creditor and you own nothing. However, you do have a creditor's claim over your supplier's assets, and that's safe as long as your supplier is financially sound. However, if your supplier faces financial troubles, the law will try to treat all creditors fairly by forcing equal amounts of the balance sheet to everyone. Of course, rarely is there enough to go around.

With outright ownership, you're completely protected from insolvencies. To make sure you don't lose your money when creditors get an equal share, you must take delivery of what you buy. When you're trading gold, this means the gold gets removed from the balance sheet of the supplier and becomes your property. The law states that liquidators must give property to its rightful owners before distributing assets from the balance sheet to creditors. This gives you protection from a custodian's financial troubles.

With OneGold, you enjoy this protection with your gold ownership. You're the outright owner of the gold from the minute you complete your gold purchase.

Insurance

Calculation of risk shows that your gold is safer when it's in an accredited vault than if you store it at home. That's why OneGold includes insurance from the moment you buy your gold to the second you sell it.

Other Ways of Buying Gold

It always helps to know all your options when you're looking to buy gold. Keep reading to learn about some of the other ways you can buy gold.

Gold Coins

When you buy gold coins, you'll likely want to store them in a safe deposit box. You'll need to get insurance to cover your coins, but that's not always easy. It requires you to declare your gold coins, which you might not want to do. If you decide to sell your coins, you could lose up to 8 percent on your sale, depending on whether you're selling an individual coin or in bulk. In a financial meltdown, you might find it difficult to liquidate your coins, especially if your country implements exchange controls.

Although owning gold coins has some drawbacks, many people choose to keep a small reserve of gold coins. If you do decide to purchase gold coins, it's important to understand the difference between bullion coins and numismatic coins. Bullion coins don't have any value as a collectible; they're worth only as much as their gold content. On the other hand, collectors look for numismatic coins. Their value is based on factors other than metal content, such as history or rarity.

Gold Certificates and Unallocated Gold

A gold certificate is a certificate — instead of actual gold — that gold owners have in their possession that shows their ownership, and many people have gold certificates for unallocated gold. With unallocated gold, the gold remains the property of the seller and you become a creditor. Although unallocated gold is one of the most widely traded forms of gold, it also comes with several disadvantages.

Because the gold is undelivered, it stays on the balance sheet of the seller. If the seller faces insolvency, you risk total loss as an investor. Additionally, unallocated gold can have high storage fees. While unallocated gold has numerous disadvantages, suppliers still offer it because it's profitable and helps them generate additional revenue.

Gold Futures

With gold futures, you buy gold on credit to get ready for your gold investment. This is good for short-term speculators; however, sharp volatility in the market could put you at risk for large losses.

Gold ETFs

Gold ETFs (exchange-traded funds) are gold assets traded like stocks. If you've already set up a brokerage account, ETFs might be a convenient option. Before you begin, it's worth reading about gold ETFs to understand some of the key issues.

Gold Mining Stocks

Geology, politics, and cost have plagued gold mining stocks in recent years. This is mainly due to concerns about the environmental impact of gold mining. Although the rising cost of energy has hurt gold mining, people who find the right gold stock can make a good amount of money.

The Best Way to Buy Gold

Now that you understand the different options available when you're ready to buy gold, you can see why OneGold is your best choice. When you open a free account with OneGold, you'll enjoy ownership of gold or silver at great rates and low storage fees. You'll also enjoy peace of mind knowing your gold is stored in a secure vault and is insured against loss, theft, and damage.

How to Start Gold Investing with OneGold

With a deep understanding of precious metals unmatched in any competing partnership, APMEX and Sprott came together with a shared vision for the evolution of precious metals ownership. OneGold is the result of the knowledge, experience, and resources of these two globally recognized partners.