Anyone else seeing absurd premiums on physical gold right now?
- •Holy smokes, has anyone tried buying physical gold or silver lately?
- •The premiums are absolutely insane.
- •I'm talking 10-15% over spot on some of the popular coins and bars.
Holy smokes, has anyone tried buying physical gold or silver lately? The premiums are absolutely insane. I'm talking 10-15% over spot on some of the popular coins and bars. It feels like everyone and their brother is trying to get their hands on tangible assets, and the dealers are just raking it in. I've been in and out of metals for decades, ever since my Wall Street days in the 80s, and I don't remember it ever being quite this aggressive outside of a full-blown crisis.
My Gold IRA is a significant chunk of my portfolio – a lot more than most financial advisors would ever recommend, probably north of 30% of my 3 millionish total. I rebalanced a bit last year, moving some capital from my commercial real estate holdings here in NYC, expecting inflation to start really biting once all that pandemic spending filtered through. So far, my intuition seems to be holding, but these premiums are making me pause on adding any more physical right now. Paper gold isn't quite facing the same squeeze, but it also doesn't feel as much like "insurance" to me.
Are these sky-high premiums a sign of how deeply ingrained inflation fears truly are, or is it more just a supply chain issue with refineries and mints struggling to keep up? I'm leaning heavily towards the former – people are genuinely scared about their purchasing power. I'm curious what others are seeing and if anyone's found a dealer willing to offer anything remotely reasonable. Or are we just stuck paying these markups if we want to add to our stacks?