Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Buy Gold Bullion Bars

A new service offered by GoldMoney enables you to buy gold bullion bars AND take delivery at any time.

What is Gold Money

GoldMoney is a service where you can buy gold, or buy silver, and have it stored on your behalf by GoldMoney in bank vaults in London or Switzerland. Now you can have the gold bullion also delivered to you in most countries a list of which is given below.

GoldMoney are located in Jersey in the British Channel Islands independent to Britain. Jersey is governed by its own laws and regulations and not subject to British Law.

Regulatory services are provided by the Jersey Financial Services Commission (JFSC), who oversee the regulation of all financial services in Jersey.

The vaults are owned and operated by The VIA MAT group who operate under the strict standards of the London Bullion Market Association. The VIA MAT group also provide the insurance and the Andium Trust Company performs the regular audit of gold to ensure that the gold bullion matches the customers accounts.

GoldMoney is registered and regulated by the JFSC as a money service business.

How does GoldMoney Work
GoldMoney currently holds, on behalf of its customers in customer account holdings, almost 700 million dollars of solid gold bullion bars in two bank vaults. One in London and the other in Zurich, Switzerland.

Account holders simply sign up for and open an account which records their gold bullion holdings with details of when purchased, where the gold is stored and any transactions such as cashing in the gold, selling the gold and taking delivery of any gold.

You can open a free account at GoldMoney by providing your name, contact details and sufficient ID as you do with a new bank account.

Once the account is opened you simply fund the account through a bank transfer of funds and then you can buy gold bullion.

There is no wait period (other than verifying the details needed to open the account) and the account is fully private and confidential.

There is also the facility to change your gold for silver and to 'cash out' your gold if needed.

How to Buy Gold with GoldMoney
There is no minimum or maximum of gold bullion one can buy. It will depend on how much funding there is in your account. Sometimes when you want to buy gold from a dealer or bank or mint, but there is a minimum you can buy.

With GoldMoney this is not the case, making it ideal for those with smaller incomes who would like to buy gold in small amounts and build up. There are some condition relating to large quantities of gold bought at any one time. This relates to the gold spot price and buying gold at a 'locked rate'.

What are GoldMoney Gold Bars
The gold held by GoldMoney on behalf of its customers are gold bullion bars usually of the 400 troy oz. or 12.44 kg of better than 95.5 percent pure refined gold and meet the London Bullion Market Association. They originate from the following refineries:
Rand Refinery Limited (South Africa)
Metalor Technologies SA (Switzerland)
Argor-Heraeus SA (Switzerland)
Johnson Matthey Limited (United Kingdom)
Also GoldMoney buy gold in 1000 gram bullion bars. All GoldMoney 100 gram and kilo bars are "4 nines fine", meaning they are 99.99% pure gold. Each of these 1000 gram gold bullion bars is produced in Baird & Co.'s factory in London, UK. You can take delivery of these bars and once ordered, the gold bars can either be shipped to you by insured mail or you can arrange to pick up your bars at Baird & Co. Shipping is currently available to customers resident in the following 16 countries:
Austria
Belgium
Canada
Denmark
France
Germany
Holland
Italy
Luxembourg
Norway
Portugal
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
United Kingdom
USA
You can also personally deliver or ship your GoldMoney bars back to Baird & Co. in London and receive goldgrams in your Holding. The bars must be in good condition and show no signs of tampering (i.e., marks or chips that indicate some of the gold content may have been removed).

GoldMoney will charge a 2 percent fee for each returned bar. Therefore, a kilo bar return will result in a 980gg addition to your Holding. A 100 gram bar return will result in 98gg being added to your Holding.

How Much Does it Cost
Unlike buying gold from gold dealers, mints etc, the cost of buying gold from GoldMoney is appreciably less. The exchange fee to buy gold by the gram ranges from 0.98 to 2.74 percent above the prevailing spot gold price, depending upon the size of the transaction. The more gold you buy at one time the less the transaction fee proportionately.

Selling gold back to GoldMoney does not incur an exchange fee. You simply get the spot price at the moment you transfer back.

How Do You Get Your Gold Bars
Where to Start. goldmoney.com is the place to start. Here you can open a Gold Money account and then start funding your account to buy gold. You can then keep all the gold or some of the gold in your account and at any time take delivery of all or some of your gold in 1000 gram gold bars.

This is a very simple and easy, not to mention quick, way to buy gold bullion bars.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Indian Gold Bullion

Up until 1990 Indians were not supposed to hold Indian gold bullion privately due to the Gold Control Act. So most gold investment was in gold jewelery up to then although, of course, there was some limited smuggling of ten tola gold bars. These days, gold bullion is the second most preferred investment vehicle for Indians after bank deposits and for traditional families, probably the first.

After 1990 the increase of Indian gold bullion in the form of small bars, both imported and local, increased significantly to where India now consumes around 800 tonnes of gold a year. This is around 20 percent of the global demand in gold.

In the 1999/2000 budget the Indian government announced a new initiative to tap some of the private gold being held in India, by allowing the commercial banks to take deposits of gold bars, gold coins and gold jewelery against payment of interest. In India, the interest levels are set by each bank individually and all deposits are for three to seven years. As a further inducement, interest and capital gains on gold are exempt from tax.

However the amount of gold collected through this scheme has not been as much as expected falling short of the estimated 100 tonnes hoped for when it was launched. It seems that Indians prefer to keep their gold and pay their debts with money instead.

But now The National Spot Exchange, controlled by Financial Technologies, the Indian market company, is offering contracts for domestic gold bullion, ranging in size from 8 grams up to 1kilogram.

"Though India has a huge household stock of around 20,000 to 25,000 tonnes of gold, there was no single market available where this could be sold." managing director and chief executive of the National Spot Exchange, Anjani Sinha, stated.

He went on. "You don’t know what is the purity, you don’t know what the jeweller is going to pay to you ... and the price realisation is not good because there is no electronic or nationalised market for selling gold." said Mr Sinha. He pointed out that the total commission paid under the new system would be about 50 basis points, or 0.5 per cent.

Sellers now take their gold to approved refineries who then turn it into international standard gold bars of "995" purity.

Whether this will be inducement enough for private families and individuals, traditionally preferring to keep their wealth in Indian Gold Bullion, to relinquish and give up their gold is a moot point. Historically the Indian culture has not found it in its heart to give up gold bullion for cash.