The unique Liberty Quarter Eagle is one of the most beautiful certified gold coins. One side features the bust of Miss Liberty surrounded by thirteen stars  inscribed with the word “Liberty” on her coronet, and on the other has the American bald eagle grasping an olive branch .  The coins design came in the year 1840 by Christian Gobrecht, and has been one of the longest lasting designs of american currency.

The Liberty Quarter Eagle is a highly sought after coin for collectors and investors alike, it’s rich history and uniqueness makes it stand out from many other gold coins minted in the United States.

Gold is hot right now (rightfully so!), and a question we often get asked is “How do I buy gold?”

Well before we begin to answer that question I want to highlight a few things about gold coins, gold bullion, gold bars (all of which we specialize in) as well as gold jewelry. Compared to other commodities such as other precious metals, organic materials, oil, etc. there is relatively little gold in the world. And, it is getting harder and harder to find gold and more and more expensive to dig further and further. The finite-ness (is that really a word? scarcity sounds better) as well as the physical beauty of gold lends itself to its value (both as an investment device as well as something to simply be admired and cherished). Despite the advent of new technologies to locate and mine gold, it continues to be one of the most precious, and amazing precious metals on Earth.

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Found a fantastic article about the history of silver and some tips should you decide to invest in it over on Mint.com, entitled: “Looking for a Silver Lining“. For those of you unfamiliar, Mint.com is a great finance management website that allows you to tie all of your banking, credit, and finance accounts together to see a more complete and clear picture of your finances, and plan for your future. One of the greatest features it offers is a quick highlight as to where all of your money goes. Make a daily trip to starbucks? Sure it’s only a few bucks here or a few bucks there, but Mint, for better or worse, adds them up and can show you over the last month, or quarter how much you spend at each of your favorite spots. And it adds up! If only you would have made your own coffee, and invested the $1000’s of dollars you spent! In a nutshell, Mint.com is like an automated, easier version of Quicken, albeit it’s not for paying bills. And best of all they even give you suggestions on how to save your money better (better interest rates at competing banks and credit cards).

Anyway, Mint.com aside, the article on their website goes into great depth on the history of silver throughout the last 4000 years including its start as the very first form of currency. It then goes on to illustrate how and why that changed, as well as it’s value and uses in recent history.

Silver and Gold

Silver lost substantial clout when it was replaced by the Gold Standard – first in Britain in the 18th Century, and then in the US and most other economies in the 19th century. Ever since, Silver has been priced in terms of dollar-per-troy ounce, and a silver-to-gold ratio as well. In the last 10 years, Silver has effectively been exchanged at an average of 59.83 troy ounces (with very few outliers) to one troy ounce of Gold; versus the dollar, silver prices have actually increased by nearly 300%. Many attribute these effects to the concurrent rapid increase in gold values, and steady devaluation of the dollar. While silver and gold were traditionally “loosely tied” to one another – meaning that if the value of one increases, the other typically does as well – recent market conditions have have led to unique circumstances.

So, if you were ever curious about silver, I highly recommend checking out the great informative article.

I was paroozing the web the other night and stumbled upon a short, old article,  entitled: “Gold Coins Bad Investment.” Intrigued, I read on. To paraphrase the article here were the main points:

• Large Transaction Costs
• Storage
• Sensibility

Gold Large Transaction Costs? – Although it may be true that there are transaction costs (including costs to ship the gold if you require) consider that for most investments you’ll have brokerage fees closing costs, etc.

Storing Gold – I was thinking about tying this into the first explanation above, but storage is a moot point. Gold can be safely, permenantly, and inexpensively stored in your local bank’s safe deposit box, or you can opt to buy a safe. Additionally, many distributors or sellers of gold have programs to store the gold until you need it.

Gold’s Sensibility & Convenience – The author of the article notes that there is an ETF (exchange traded fund) by the name of GLD which tracks with the price of gold (and like the price of gold has sky-rocketed since the first signs of economic collapse in 2005). Although an ETF is great, as one reader notes, it doesn’t offer anonymity (you can purchase and store gold securely) and if the entire market or system tanks there could be wide-spread effects on the ability for you to pull out of an ETF.

I highly recommend checking out the movement of gold via the Google Finance website. Gold has more than doubled since 2005!

Is the U.S. selling all gold reserves to gold giant Cash4Gold? Watch this hilarious Onion video:

Much like other industries, the gold business goes through it’s up’s and down’s. Gold swings in price from low-to-high over the months, and over the years.  One period of historical significance when you are looking at gold is of course the 1970’s (we’ll be writing more in-depth articles on this in the future).

The latter half of the 1970s was fraught with soaring inflation rates.  Annual inflation in the US was as high as 15%, due in part to rising oil and the OPEC cartel. As we saw during this period, and since, commodities are a great inflation hedge (you jump in them to avoid losses). One of the best commodities, and one that absolutely soared during the 70s  was gold.

When examining why gold gained so much during the 70’s, one can almost start laughing as it was, due in part to the public’s general distrust of the global financial system. The United States even attempted to keep gold prices downby selling gold reserves from the US Treasury (this sounds familiar). But, it was no use. In addition to general inflation the dollar was weakening internationally and therefore the price of gold doubled went from $200 in 1978 to $400 in 1979 (doubling in only 1 year). Then it more than doubled again! Going from $400 in 1979 to $850 by 1980.

If you had invested in gold in the early parts of the 70’s you could have seen your investment rise more than 2000%.

Well that’s good and all, but where does that leave us, where does that leave you? Well the point of this article is to look at the smaller picture. I actually found quite an interesting blog post about the best time to buy gold. The author averaged the rise and fall of the prices of gold over the last decade by month. Averaging if it falls or rises each month. And we’re about to end June… and June happens to be (according to the authors chart) a great month to by Gold!

Found a very interesting article today on the potential approval of IMF gold sales (400 tons of gold):

One of the main bullets the author wrote about why this push should be cheered is:

China is a possible recipient of the gold. If the real reason for this move is to allow China to get rid of some US dollars or treasuries in return for gold I view that as good thing.

This has far-reaching implications on the price of both gold as well as (potentially) the dollar. I encourage you to check out the article.

One country you should look at when examining gold, its health and strength is China. I was reading an article over on commodityonline.com which had some very interesting statistics on China’s reserves of gold. According to the resource China now has over 1,000 tons of gold, up from less than 400 tons in early 2000.

That’s right, in less than 10 years, China has tripled it’s gold reserves:

[After growing its reserves to 400 tons in]n 2001, then to 600 tons in 2003. The country has added another 454 tons to the gold reserve through gold purification and domestic trade.

A total of over 1000 tons of gold!

The news of China’s huge reserves, and their growing dominance in the world gold market has many excited as China may be looking to purchase large quantities of gold bullion. Currently, China has the 5th largest reserves of Gold in the world, only topped by the United States, France, Germany, and Italy.

The purchases of Gold that have grown China’s reserves by such a large amount have been the result of recurring purchases made over the last 6 years through China’s SAFE (State Administration of Foreign Exchange).

Found an interesting article over at the First Forex Trading Blog about Securing Business Assets with Gold. Here are some great points the article mentioned:

• No one has to know about the transaction because it is completely private. The world doesnt have to know about your gold purchase.
• When the money must be tapped for one reason or another, the gold can be sold [exchanged or sold in any currency].
• You can securely store the gold in [any] way you want.
• When the economy is not doing so well and the value of the dollar goes down, the gold doesnt go down with it all [in fact it typically goes up].

We speak a lot about personal finance and why gold is a great vehicle to place your assets. Click here for a quick review on the history of gold as well as how and why we believe gold will gain over the coming years in light of a global economic recession. But, one topic that hasn’t been directly addressed involves securing your business assets in gold.

As business owners we tend to forget that, much like an individual, we can do things with our left over cash or invest our existing assets in many financial vehicles. Typically business owners realize that real estate is a great investment, or it used to be. A business needs a space to operate, and rather than pay rent over-and-over filling the pockets of your land lord you can instead to invest in a space of your own. You can save up and purchase a parcel and place outright or you can apply for a mortgage just like an individual. But, just like an individual you can also secure your business assets with Gold. In the past stocks and bonds may have been a viable option to look into, but considering the fact that we are in the midst of a global economic recession, with the future of companies, and even currencies, such as the dollar in question, gold is the perfect vehicle to secure your business assets.

Ran into this website today, http://dgcsc.org/goldprices.htm.

I was looking for many months at one point for an XML or RSS feed for a timely, accurate price of gold. Well they have it:

• http://dgcsc.org/goldprices2.xml
• http://dgcsc.org/goldprices.xml

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