I am interested in buying gold.
Physical gold, not that semi-fraudulent "paper gold" sold by banks in HK.
My goal is to get as close of a price to spot gold as possible.
I love the visual appearance of well done pure gold coins (anything from the Perth mint, maples, etc--but not impure coins like krugs). But I am now cheap and do not want to pay the premium that coins usually command over spot.
I have been told that my best bet is to buy gold bars. I was told that the major jewelry stores in HK all sell them. So, about 2 weeks ago, I investigated. My results are below. (The prices that I give are for that time, so the numbers are really only good for relative comparisons.)
What I would love is to hear if anyone has any better sources than the best I list below (Chow Sang Sang).
There are some old threads on this website (like this one), but I did not quite find what I want.
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Luk Fook: only sells fancy designed bars. They give you a very bad "spot" rate (their initial sell price) of HK$ 470/g. This is significantly worse than the actual real time gold spot price (see below). Then they want a 2% commission on top of that plus a "labor" fee of about HK$1,000 (depends on how fancy the design is on the bar). In the store I visited, I was able to negotiate the price of the bar down to 1% commission and low labor IF I bought a decent amount(e.g. 5 taels).
Chow Tai Fook: seemed to be the same as Luk Fook, except they are arrogant and will not budge from their commission at all.
Chow Sang Sang: they were distinctly the best for what I want. They give you a mediocre spot rate of HK$ 445/g <--> US$ 1,780/oz. I recall that kitco said that gold spot was around US$ 1,735 at that time, so they are effectively charging you about US$45 for the bar <--> a 2.5% markup. Very good is that they charge ZERO commission and "labor" fee. The bar that you get is quite plain, not fancy, but that is OK for me, as I hate pay the premium.
If anyone knows who can beat Chow Sang Sang, please speak up!