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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;myownprivy, post: 3944968, member: 84588&quot;]He referred to it as a hobby at least three times. He also compared it to other buying and said if we accepted the proposition that dealers have to make money in other areas, we&#039;d all go broke. </p><p><br /></p><p>But what he&#039;s talking about are transactional costs related to buying and selling bullion which is typical for any form of investment buying and selling. Buy a house, someone has to pay the realtor&#039;s commission. Sell a house, you have to pay the realtor&#039;s commission. Buy a stock, you have to pay a fee (although less so nowadays, which is awesome). Buy bullion, a middleman has to hold all that heavy gold and silver somewhere, so expect to pay a few percentage points over spot at his shop or website. Sell it back, expect to not make back that premium you paid when buying. </p><p><br /></p><p>Those premiums on bullion are all perfectly acceptable to me because of the nature of the investment. Just like when buying stock or just like when buying/selling a home.</p><p><br /></p><p>The OP says we&#039;d all go broke if we had to do in other forms of buying. But that&#039;s a very unrelated comparison, because in most buying that we do, we never sell the item back. Groceries? Clothing? Cleaning supplies? Those things are called consumables because the transactions move in only one direction. Cars? Furniture? Those are depreciating assets that are used in some form and lose value from that use. So other buying is simply not related at all to bullion buying (or investing).</p><p><br /></p><p>He&#039;s comparing investing (buying something hoping it will gain value) vs other forms of buying (to consume) or to collect (like numismatics). But there&#039;s just no similarity. </p><p><br /></p><p>I suppose the one concession I would make is that if we want to treat bullion investing as bullion collecting, or a hobby, we can. We can buy/sell/trade among ourselves without dealers and never deal with fees or prices above spot. However, most people don&#039;t deal bullion to each other. Just as most people don&#039;t sell houses without realtors or trade stock without a broker. It&#039;s just not safe when we&#039;re talking about that kind of money.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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