Gold Sold From Vending Machines In Germany 472
There are fewer hassles for an adventurer or business traveler bigger than lugging around bags of silver and copper pieces. Luckily TG-Gold-Super-Markt has installed gold vending machines in 500 locations including train stations and airports all across Germany. The machines charge about 30% more than the current trading price for gold, and are updated every few minutes. All are closely monitored by cameras, and like 3rd and 4th edition, electrum pieces are not accepted.
Im sorry (Score:2, Interesting)
Gold is the currency of the future (Score:2, Interesting)
Gold holds its value like nothing else and if you're brought up to court by the RIAA it's going to be a lot harder to take your gold than it is for them to change the sign on your bank balance.
The machines charge 30% MORE than trading price? (Score:5, Interesting)
Am I missing something? Is there really such a demand for gold on the street that the convenience of being able to purchase it from a vending machine warrants a 30% markup? What possibly could justify an individual purchasing gold at a 30% markup in small quantities?
I'm not an economist (not that they have really have a good track record lately) but this seems like a ridiculous scam.
"Because of the crisis there is a lot of awareness of gold," he said. "It is also a great gift for children - for them getting gold is like a fairytale."
Somehow I think little Jimmy or Susy would have prefer a Playstation or a bike or something.
Re:The machines charge 30% MORE than trading price (Score:3, Interesting)
We are at the beginning/middle/end of a gold bubble, just like we had a .com stock bubble in 1999/2000 and a real estate bubble from 2001-2007.
Gold is a lot easier to smuggle through customs (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Interesting but inherently flawed! (Score:3, Interesting)
The purity issues are easy to deal with. They are standardised coins such as Kruggerands (South Africa), Maples (Canada), Eagles (US), Sovreigns (UK) etc. People can weigh the coins and get the volume very easily. If the density is correct, it is made of gold.
A lot of gold ETFs, particularly the ones that don't charge you for storage, don't actually hold any physical gold to back up your investment. Instead they match your investment with people who are short selling gold. It is very similar to the way spread betting works, except it is taxed as an investment rather than a gambling transaction. These funds can and do go bust, and investors have lost money as a result.
Re:Gold is the currency of the future (Score:3, Interesting)
Cash is going away because it's terribly inconvenient compared to electronic methods. So now you're this theoretical criminal who deals in gold. How you going to use that gold for anything other than paying another criminal, since nobody else is going to want to take your inconvenient gold, except maybe if they charge you a ridiculous surcharge. Sure, they'll be some places that pop up and advertise heavily that you can pay with gold, no problem, no extra charge. But guess where the first place is that the cops will put under surveillance so they can tell who uses a lot of gold?
All this is pretty silly anyway, though. As cash dies, what will replace it are anonymous cash cards. They already have them in plenty of other countries. If/when cash is phased out here, they'll have to exist and not specifically for criminals. You think most people are going to want to run their credit card down at the porn store?
Been done before (Score:5, Interesting)
When I lived in Switzerland '86-'88 you could get small gold ingots from a UBS ATM on the Bahnhofstrasse in downtown Zurich. Just the sort of thing a conservative Swiss banker would do on the way home from work.
Re:why? (Score:3, Interesting)
gold never really loses value*
Sure it does. Lock yourself in a bank vault filled with gold for a year. How much gold would you trade for water on day 2? How much gold would you trade for water on day 10? How much for food? How much would you trade for indoor plumbing on day X?
Okay, that's kind of a ridiculous scenario. But I'll tell you how gold loses value: if no one wants it. The only reason gold had "value" in ancient times was because people realized that it could be used as a medium of exchange. It had no value of its own other than being pretty. You couldn't eat it, you couldn't use it for armor or weapons. Mostly worthless except for being a fake mechanism of trade due to its rarity (harder for people to "pretend" they did a service or sold a good than by using a leaf or seashell in trade).
Gold's real value skyrocketed when we found out we could use it for stuff (electronics, medicine, etc), but its market value remained the same (everyone wanted it because everyone else wanted it). Now that credit and/or paper cash seems ingrained in our cultures, gold will lose value once people stop wanting it for anything but jewelry, electronics, and other actual uses. The gold bubble is going to burst soon, and people with a lot of it are trying hard to sell it off a little bit at a time, trying to con people saying "Only Gold is this stable", hoping to get real currency, or even better, durable goods and livestock. When you think about it, what's been more stable than *stuff*?
*Spelling corrected
Re:30%? (Score:3, Interesting)
Only if they are over 30.
Re:Gold is the currency of the future (Score:4, Interesting)
No, really honey, I was just buying some pens [penisland.net] and fishing tackle! [bigalsonline.com]
Re:Im sorry (Score:3, Interesting)
Mostly in the south, out of fear of the black president.
Irrational knee jerk reaction.
Plenty of Ammo here on the west coast.
Re:Gold is the currency of the future (Score:3, Interesting)
If gold became a serious black-market currency, it would be tagged with trace impurities. I wouldn't be surprised if much of it already is. It's already possible to tell which mine gold came from. (see gold fingerprinting [wikipedia.org])
World governments already have buy-in from printer manufacturers to tag all printouts for the purpose of tracing paper-money fraud. It would be even easier to coerce gold refiners to do the same, given that governments are such large consumers of gold.
Re:Im sorry (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think it's anger, I think it's fear. Here in Oz we have bolt action rifles and shotguns for sportsmen, "self defence" is not a valid reason for obtaining a shooters license. Even before our strict gun laws very few people owned hand guns, I can't imagine living in a country where fear of your fellow countrymen is the norm.
As for our government, they are too disorganised to run a totalitarian state, if they tried most of the victims would die laughing.
Much better deal at money exchange (Score:3, Interesting)
Not sure about Germany or other parts of the world, but in Poland, many (most?) standard money exchange points buy and sell "gold junk", with about +/- 15% markup on the market price (the difference between their buy/sell price is around 30%, market price somewhere in the middle).
The interesting part is that this "gold junk" is usually in form of perfectly good jewelry - various gold chains, rings etc - and with a much higher actual jewelry value. So you can ask them to show what golden items they got, find something that is pretty, undamaged and you like it, and ask to have it weighted for you - you buy a quality jewelry item for price of junk. If you're lucky and knowledgeable, you may find a very valuable antique even, worth many times its weight in gold.
A clarification from someone who is kinda involved (Score:3, Interesting)
Disclaimer: I work at the ISP which is handling this from the IT pov.
TFA is wrong. While the gold is obviously more expensive than what TG buys it at, it is still cheaper than what you, as an end-user, pay for actual physical gold.
Bypassing large resellers and banks, both the online shop at http://gold-super-markt.de/ [gold-super-markt.de] and the vending machines are cheaper than your local bank or jeweler. I am not saying that everyone should rush to buy gold, but if you plan to do so anyway, there is now a discount outlet.