if the price doesn't go too higher for me. http://www.ebay.com/itm/4-x-1-oz-Si...48237?pt=US_Bullion_Coins&hash=item20d511836d
Winning bid was US $105.25 for 4 Oz of silver coins. That is $26.31 / Oz. In Kitco, 1 oz Silver Canadian Maple Leaf can be purchased for $23.34. So actually the person who won the bid paid a premium of 15%. Peter, have you ever purchased bullion from Kitco? Are there any hidden charges with them?
that would actually depend on what the shipping/purchase minimums are with Kitco. Chances are greater than not, that the "15% discount" to which you implied was the case with the Kitco price, would have been whittled away by shipping and processing charges and that would assume Kitco would even allow people to purchase Silver Maple Leaf coins at such a low quantity at the rate of $23.34. The biggest thing I noticed about the seller selling those coins is that he offered free shipping within the lower 48 states, most companies like Apmex and Kitco can't afford to make such offers because they have way more overhead than ebay sellers and they rely on much more volume which costs way more to ship on top of that, so at the end of the day, for most of those companies, offering free shipping, vs charging what it costs them to ship could mean the different between remaining profitable and going belly-up, which is why ebay sellers can generally offer better pricing for just one or two coins (4 in this case) than the major companies with retail or retail-like overhead. Most ebay buyers also take shipping costs into account when placing their bid, the know what they're willing to pay and shipping is already included in that pre-determined price point, so if they see shipping is free, x=0 and as a result, pre-determined price-x=originally pre-determined price since there was no shipping, which the same can't be said about Kitco or Apmex, unless you really buy in bulk to save more than enough to cover the entire cost of shipping by comparison, which 3 or 4 compared to one, that's not really considered a significant enough difference, even if it's the same $23.34, to make it worth the extra shipping charges, so with 4 coins, the price the buyer ended up paying, regardless of what his base price would have been at Kitco, was still a better deal, even if Kitco were to sell them at the $23.44 level and just barely cover their shipping in the shipping and processing charges, the ebay deal would have still been the better deal, having taken shipping charges vs free shipping into account.
You are right. I don't think the minimum price limit for a Kitco purchase is anywhere below $250, although I am not sure on this. I didn't noticed that the buyer was offering free shipping. If so, it was a great deal!
