Welcome to Silvertip Gold
Thanks for checking out my business, and hopefully I can offer you what you're looking for.
Purchasing real physical Gold and Silver coins and bars from Silvertip is the easiest and quickest way for you to purchase precious metals in Saskatchewan. It's as easy as.... (1) you make an appointment, (2) we meet, and then (3) you leave with your purchase. But if you're new to the precious metals market, or you've not dealt here before, there are a few things that you should understand before you dive right in. Making a fully educated decision on what and how much to purchase, is important to me, so here I hope to take the guess work out of buying real gold and silver.
Silvertip is a privately owned small business owned and operated by myself. I have full confidence that the precious metals have and always will, play an important part in helping to protect ones wealth over time. My aim is to be able to help provide you with answers to any questions you may have about investing in physical gold and silver, and to be able to supply to you directly, person to person, the products you're purchasing. Silvertip is not a store where you can walk in anytime, but rather, for safety and security, this office is in a secured office building on 8th street in Saskatoon.
Depending on the value of your purchase, there's a few different options on how a purchase/sale is transacted. But for a vast majority of the time, it simply involves you calling to discuss what you're looking to purchase/sell. And then an appointment is scheduled for you to come in. Please call me, or continue reading below, to learn more of how simple it is to make a purchase, and to learn a few key items that will help make sure you're well-informed about how prices are determined when dealing with Precious Metals, which has a moving SPOT price which changes every second.
Credibility and the assurance of privacy is critical for a Gold and Silver dealer. Please know that I've been operating in Saskatoon since 2011 and over that time, have acquired a substantial client base. You will find a good number of positive Customer Feedback reports on places like Google Business, etc. You can visit the Royal Canadian Mint website, to verify that Silvertip is an accredited Bullion DNA dealer. I trust this will assist you in knowing you can purchase with confidence, and have the assurance that your confidentiality is an essential aspect of our business that I take very seriously.
1. Small Business
Being a sole-proprietor has it's benefits, and it's downsides. My aim is to bring you the best prices possible, in the physical precious metals market. Being a small, privately owned business means that in most cases you have the advantage of taking immediate possession of your gold or silver and you're not waiting weeks or even months to receive your items as you would from on-line companies. Many of my clients inform me that they actually prefer this option, as they get to speak and deal directly with someone who actually works in the gold business, as opposed to a clerk in the bank who most often isn't able to answer any questions about precious metals. The banks are there only to make money off of you, whereas I aim to also assist you in any way I can, to help you learn about the whole field of precious metals investing. My hope is that this is seen as a value-added benefit that I can offer to you.
2. Meeting Times - by appointment only
Please call to book a meeting
Monday to Saturday, 1:00pm to 5:00pm.
Closed on Sundays.
3. Ever-changing Prices
The biggest obstacle that people often require to know and understand, is that when dealing in gold and silver, the prices change every minute, so the exact price that you will pay for something, can only be determined at the time you are actually making the payment. Once you understand this reality, that prices will go down or up constantly, buying or selling is as easy as one phone call or text. Then a meeting is set up, and you will them either take immediate possession of your products, or if you're selling, receive payment on the spot.
4. Forms of Payment
If you click on the "Payments Option" tab at the top of this screen, it'll take you to that info page. You can review which option is going to work best for you, then give me a call when you're ready to make a deal.....it's that easy.
5. Minimum purchase
Please note that currently there is a minimum purchase amount for silver of 25 ounces. There is no minimums currently for gold items. If you'd like to purchase smaller amounts, please check out the "Little Nuggets" tab.
6. Get Rich Quick ?
Purchasing precious metals is not a good idea if you're plan is to make a quick buck. I often receive calls where someone has watched a video where someone is portraying that gold or silver is going to explode in the next week or so, and then is going to be in the of thousands per oz by year's end. Now for sure, no one knows the future, and anything is possible, but you are most likely going to be unhappy with your purchase, and will be depressed when you see the prices in the short term, actually go down. When you purchase, I recommend you have the frame of mind, that the prices will likely drop 10% to 20% in the short term, and that if something comes up and you have to re-sell your purchase within days or months of your purchase, you should be prepared to take a 20% hit in silver, and a 15% hit in gold. Again, hopefully you've researched this enough to understand that precious metals is not a get rich quick scheme, but over the long term it has proven to be the best asset class to be in, especially when all the others have taken a downturn.
7. "What if I buy & Sell the Same Day ?" & "How much money are you making off of me ?"
These two questions are asked of me quite often, so I felt it would be worthwhile to try to write an answer here. Believe me, the amount commodity dealers make is far less than someone who does not understand the business often calculates, as they tend to just take the Dealer's SELL price, and deduct that from their BUY price, and then assume that's the Dealer's Pay Cheque. But that is far from reality, and that is why it's important, if you truely want to understand how much a Dealer is making off of you, or how much you would loose, if you bought and sold, minutes apart, it's quite a lengthy discussion.... and I'll do my best to explain that here. Please keep in mind, the following explaination would apply to any physical commodity, like grains, oil, coffee bean, etc.
First of all, let me be clear that the "spread", or the difference between the buy and sell price IS NOT the amount that the dealer is making, not even close. The profit margin for any bullion gold dealer is less than .1%. The main reason the "spread" is far more than that, is that the dealer has to replace their stock at the going rate from the mint the moment you purchase from them. And on the Sell side, they have to sell back into the market, the moment you sell to them. If the SPOT price never changed, then yes, a dealer could hold onto their purchase, and wait for someone to come and buy it. But if dealers in any commodity were to operate that way, they would either go bankrupt in short order, or they would run out of cash very quickly in times when there are high sell orders. When a dealer runs out of cash flow, they are no longer a dealer. When a dealer makes a large purchase, or many clients are selling at the same time, etc., and if the SPOT price were to fall before any buyers come forward, they have to hedge against this. That's the only way a dealer can stay in business, as gambling that the Spot price will always stay the same or go upwards every time a customer sells to them, is both foolish and not based on truth. When you as a customer makes a purchase, the dealer buys into the market the amount you buy, and then sells into the market, the same amount when you sell to them. When a Dealer makes a sale, to continue to be able to remain in business, and to have stock available for the next client, they have to Lock-In the prices at that moment, at the Mint, and the price includes any current premium that the Mint is charging, over and above the Spot price. Otherwise, please consider the scenario... a dealer sells you some silver at $50 per ounce and doesn't immediately replace that with product from the Mint..... then over the next few day, the Spot Price rises by $5 per ounce, and then another customer comes in, wanting to make a purchase. The dealer now has no product to sell them, and the price has risen to $55. The customer would now have to pay for product and not receive it, and the dealer has to purchase less product at a higher cost..... if this continued, eventually the Dealer has no product to sell, and they go out of business. And then let's look at the reverse option, where a customer sells their Silver back to a dealer at $50 an ounce, and the Dealer doesn't immediately sell that amount of silver back into the world market, which is always a certain percentage below the Spot Price. That would quickly turn into a situation what the Dealer had a larger stockpile of Silver, but no funds to be able to pay any future customer. Again, in this situation, the Dealer goes out of business, as they can no longer purchase what their customers are wanting to sell.
Now, you may be thinking....but every day, there's customers who buy and customers who sell, no? Well, in a perfect world, that would be the case, and then yes, a Dealer could tighten their Spread Price, and the Buyers could pay less, and the Sellers would receive more. And, yes, if this was the case, you would be correct. But...... unforturnately, this is not reality. Please understand that, as in most areas of life, when some people are doing something....many people are doing it as well. For example, one day the beach is almost empty of swimmers, then another day, the beach is packed full. Or consider when you go grocery shopping. Sometimes in the day, there's no line ups at the Till, then at other time, the line of people waiting goes to the back of the store. Why is this, there's many factors at play..... but the reality I'm trying to get across, is that just like in these examples, people buying and selling commodities, for the most part, tend to follow the current trends. This means that the vast majority of a commodities Dealer's customers are either all selling at a paticular time....or all wanting to purchase. And because of this reality in the Commodities Market, we do not ever have a time where 50% of our customers came in to sell, the exact some amount of product, at a certain price point, and the other 50% of customers coming in to purchase those items sold.
And that is why, for a Commodities Dealer to be able to stay in business, they must always hedge their sales and purchases, into the current market, at the applicable price point. Which, when we as Dealers make a purchase to replace your purchase, we pay premiums above the Spot price, just like you do.... and unfortuantely we receive a price under the current Spot price for your product when you sell back to us. And this is the way any Commodities Dealer has to opperate, in order to stay in business. So please understand, that your dealer is making far less that you might think, if you're belief is that their income can simply be calculated by taking their current Sell price and subtracting their Buy price. I truely hope this explaination has been profitable, and if there's any further questions you'd like answered in regards to this subject, please call me any time and I'd be happy to discuss.
And now to answer the original question, as to "how much would I lose?", requires much background and explanation to answer, so I'll need to be thorough here as well.
Gold and silver should be viewed as insurance against a currency collapse, and a protection of ones wealth, or purchasing power. It is not an "investment" that is designed to creep upwards every year. It can, and does, but there are much better "investments" that the financial investing world has to offer you, if that's what you're looking for. That is of course, till history repeats itself, and the fiat currency becomes worthless, and now you're left with nothing. During the past 4000 years, the only financial instrument that has not eventually gone to zero, is Gold and Silver.
Everyone knows, that when you pay $50,000 for a new car, the moment you drive it off the lot, you're losing around $10,000. So one could argue, that the car you just purchased was not worth $50,000, it was only worth $40,000. Then why did you pay the $50,000, if you knew it was really only worth $40,000 ? There's likely several reasons why, and I'll let you stop and ponder those reasons for yourself for a bit....then continue on with my explanation.
"Paper Gold" can be purchased from your banker, or on-line, as and Exchange Traded Fund(ETF), or other similar entity. These formats offer a very good Purchase to Sell ratio, because you're not actually purchasing any gold or silver, and they are just set up to make money off of you, through their daily fees. Yes, that's correct, when you put money towards these paper gold things, YOU ARE NOT PURCHASING ANY GOLD ! You are led to believe you are, and you very well might believe you are, but please do the research, because you are only purchasing at best, a piece of paper stating that you've paid someone to manage a fund for you, that is based on the SPOT price of Gold and Silver. That is why, none of these ETF's of Gold Funds, etc. are priced anywhere near the SPOT price, because then people would be more likely to calculate for themselves, that the scheme is a scam. Need proof? As of today, the largest Gold ETF fund is GLD on the Dow Stock Exchange. It's price per item is $159.78, which is nowhere near the current SPOT price of $1705 USD. That's because you're not purchasing a speck of actual Gold, you're just putting money towards their fund. So with this scheme, the only way to find out how much they're really taking from you, is to take the percentage that the gold price has gone up over time, and compare it to the percentage that your funds have gone up during that same time. Then you will see, that the fees were huge. But because the fees aren't up front, and there's no way to calculate them ahead of time, some people are enticed, and do put their money there. And yes, if you were to buy one day, then sell the next, the "Spread", or difference between the two, would be quite low, as compared to the real physical Gold, but then every month you own the ETF, fees are taken off your purchase, and that's when the real cost of your investment begins to be realized. And because these funds are so heavily leveraged, and work totally off of derivatives, I can speculate that when the financial world is subject to a really bad downturn, that these market funds will be subject to insolvency, therefore you would lose 100% of your investment.
Now that you understand the real costs with investing in fake, paper gold products, you should be able to have a better time at understanding the answer to your question, of "what is the spread of gold?" Just like most things in life, there is no one exact number I can tell you here, because there are many moving parts, and the numbers would be different with every single dealer. But what I will do, is give you some percentages, that, would be close, under "normal" circumstances. That is, when there are no major crisis going on in the world, and life is just chugging along at a smooth pace. And the numbers are based on purchasing several one ounce gold coins.
1. Purchase Gold - 3% to 8% over the SPOT price.
2. Sell Gold - 0% to 5% under the SPOT price.
3. Purchase Silver - 14% to 30% over the SPOT price
4. Sell Silver - SPOT to 15% under the SPOT price.
And as noted above, these are some average percentages you can expect during NORMAL times. In times of major unrest, such as the 2020 Pandemic, the Purchase Price percentages over the paper spot prices, went as high as 50%. This may be hard to understand, but it should really just make you feel more secure with holding real gold and silver. Again, the spot price you see on the internet is the price that is based on the paper markets, not the real assets. People invest into the real assets, because it's based on true supply and demand, not the manipulated fictitious paper market. If you wish to read more about this, please see "The Case for Gold" tab, found above.
The variances in the numbers can include such options as, number of items bought or sold, the condition of the coins, whether they're brand new from the mint or are second hand, weekday vs weekend(markets open or closed), whether the general trend of the last while has been trending upwards or downwards, or even whether the particular dealer is fully stocked at the time, or is needing to replenish.
8. Capital Gains ....
I question I often get asked, is "is gold and silver subject to capital gains tax.?" And my official answer has to be, "please check with your accountant on that." But my basic understanding of investments within Canada, is that anything purchased as "an investment" is subject to Capital Gains/Losses. So if my belief is correct, if one were to sell pure gold and silver, and made money, they would most likely be required to report their investment earnings to the CRA, and would be taxed at the applicable rate, on 50% of the earnings. And conversely, if the investment was sold, resulting in a net loss, then that loss could be used against any capital gains, reducing the amount of taxes owed from those other gains. Again, this is not tax advice to be used, but only my current basic understanding of things. Please check with an accredited Accountant to attain that knowledge for sure.
9. In Closing ....
I'd recommend that you spend time studying and researching the role that gold and silver plays within an investment strategy, and you'll likely see that most well diversified portfolios can have between 10% and 20% invested into physical gold and silver. But the choice is totally up to you, whether you'll sleep better at night knowing that you have the real thing, or if it's better for you to have a piece of paper stating that someone else has your wealth and are "protecting" if for you. Because that is a decision that's best discussed between you, the ones you love, and your accredited Financial Advisor.
If you have read and believe you understand all the aspects of dealing in gold and silver, then please give me a call and I'll do my best to make sure you get the real physical gold and silver into your hands, and to start protecting your wealth with products that have been found to be tried and true, for thousands of years.
Hope to talk to you soon,
Gary