First time investor in gold and thinking I'm an idiot
TLDR: I'm an idiot. Going to Costco.
I was offered $500 in "free silver" to remove this post. Nah.
Edit for visibility: CBS news now has an article that explains how to watch for scams. At the very end of the article is a link titled “Learn more about your gold investing options now.”. It isn’t marked as an ad and is the final line of their report. It links to American Hartford Gold. Just sayin’.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-to-find-reputable-gold-dealers-avoid-scams-2025/?ftag=CNM-00-10aac3a
Continuing original post:
I'm hoping y'all can help me out with clarifying something for me since I'm admittedly a newbie to large quantity gold purchasing, aside from random jewelry and whatnot.
I decided to invest $50,000 towards a gold purchase (and a small amount of silver) from a large gold dealer here in the USA. I made it clear that I didn't want any fancy coins and was looking for simple minted gold bars or cheap coin investment that will be kept for 5 to 10 years in case the dollar goes tits up. They understood that I didn't want any specialized trading coins, so they skipped that part of the "initiation talk" where they explained markup due to minting costs. I read and signed the documentation where they quoted 1 to 19 percent "spread" for standard gold, or "up to 40%" for "specialized coins" which we said we didn't want.
Then I received the bill.
They charged us $50,000 for $26,000 worth of gold and a some silver (at current spot price). That's an 85% markup.
Am I an idiot and not understanding what a spread is? (Edit: yes sir, I am an idiot, but right about the spread). When I called them, they said they charged me a 20% spread (holy crap!). I should note that the percent spread was not provided until *after* the gold purchase.
If I lost 54% in gold value on this purchase (85% markup), how does that work with the 20% spread?
EDIT: The company is American Hartford Gold. I'm wondering if the California State Attorney General Office would have interest.
CBS News’ recommended dealers (evidently a paid ad):
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/where-to-buy-gold-bars-coins/
And #2 on Forbes:
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/l/best-gold-iras/
And highly regarded on Money.com
https://money.com/best-online-gold-dealers/
You can see the trend here.
We called and had a bit of a heightened screamfest to request our money back immediately, which they say they are wiring back to us.
Edit 1b: They wired the full 50k back to us so we're square there.
Edit 2: Here is the receipt. If I'm misunderstanding the pricing here and it's not as bad as I'm thinking, then by all means pile on to me. Feeling very stupid at the moment.
Just as an example, the first item on the list is 0.25oz coins, tube of 20 (5 oz total) charged $28,000. Really!?
https://preview.redd.it/gv7e6g0rh4re1.png?width=713&format=png&auto=webp&s=e515b948bbfb38fb9f8a18f56a2764fa06559b86