ATMs That Dispense Gold Bars Coming To America 482
tetrahedrassface writes "As the US economic woes continue unabated, a German company is bringing gold-bearing ATMs to Mainstreet America. The machines accept credit cards, and will dispense 1 gram, 5 gram, 10 gram and 1 ounce units, as well as various gold coins. The company hopes to install 35 bullion machines in the United States this year, and will hopefully have several hundred up and running by next year. The machines will be decorated like giant gold ingots and be over two meters tall. Physical gold has both pros and cons, but from a safety standpoint would it be fine to have a couple of ounces in your pocket while walking around the mall? The giant, gold-dispensing ATMs will monitor the market conditions for gold every 10 minutes in order to reflect spot price changes as they occur." We already covered similar machines installed in travel hubs across Germany.
Bullion != billion (Score:5, Informative)
how much is "35 bullion"
Probably more than three Brazilian [about.com]. (If you thought it was a typo for billion, see bulk precious metal [wikipedia.org].)
Re:"Sell your gold for cash!" ads (Score:3, Informative)
Re:In times of financial crisis (Score:4, Informative)
And considering the massive failure that was the last gold seizure (they only got 500 tons total), and the fact that we aren't on a gold standard, so they can devalue the dollar just fine as is, there is no need and little likelihood of future seizure of gold. Your retirement accounts will probably be nationalized long before your gold is seized.
Re:35 bullion? (Score:5, Informative)
It's spelt billion.
This article has nothing to do with grains!
That's how us Brits spell "spelled": http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/spelt [reference.com]
Re:Yet another problem (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I see a hack waiting to happen... (Score:4, Informative)
It was never illegal to sell gold to the public. Jewelers, dentists, and electronic connector manufacturers would have pitched a fit.
What was illegal was ownership of non-artistic non-numismatic gold beyond a certain rather minimal level.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 [wikipedia.org]
Re:I see a hack waiting to happen... (Score:2, Informative)
Two words: CASH FOR GOLD. You mail whatever gold crap you have and they will pay you something for it (though nowhere near melt value).
Re:Cue the crying (Score:5, Informative)
Um, no, Goldline is a scam, whether or not investing in gold is a good idea.
Why? Because Goldline is selling gold at a 150% markup, and hence no one will ever get their investment back.
You call, they give a little spiel about how the price of gold has gone up and is thus a good investment, or has gone down and hence is a good time to buy, and they they sell you gold at absurd markup and fail to mention that it has any markup at all.
They're pretending to be a commodities broker, and talk a lot about 'reselling' and whatnot. They're actually conmen, and under investigation by the Senate.
And Glenn Beck and Fox News knows this damn well, but are paid a lot.
This is totally irrelevant to whether or not gold is a good investment. It might be if you actually purchase gold at market price, but it sure as hell isn't if you purchase from Goldline.
Re:Already here (Score:5, Informative)
Here, let me plug this cable into your VGA adapte
VGA stands for Video Graphics Array [wikipedia.org]. VGA adapter is not redundant.
Re:I see a hack waiting to happen... (Score:3, Informative)
What it can't ban is gold coinage.
Because of the magical exception not allowing them to ban gold coinage. Oh, wait, that doesn't exist, that's just part of the Goldline scam to sell gold at 100% markup.
'Oh, we're not selling gold bars, because we've invented a reason that the government might come take those. Take this gold coins instead.'...'Oh, did we forget to mention that, after all that talk of 'investment', that we were selling them at a huge markup, so gold would need to double or even triple in price before you could even make your money back? Oops.'.
So, to recap with actual facts instead of Goldline nonsense:
a) the government has to actually pay for stuff it takes, so would have to pay the actual price of gold at that point., like it did the first time. This actually is a constitutional premise, unlike the stupid 'coin' exception conmen have invented. No, it cannot pay the value stamped on the coins. Eminent domain requires paying the actual value of stuff, determined by a court. This is why the court struck down the first time...the currency devaluation had changed the value of the gold, and the government knew that would happen.
This doesn't mean the price will be what people want, the government will certainly pick a dip in the prices to set the price, and once the government starts the price of gold will go up even more, which the government will ignore, but there's no way in hell they could set the price to anything but the market value of the gold at some point.
b) if the government can confiscate gold bars, it can certainly do the same to gold coins. The exception was 'rare coins with intrinsical value', and was in the (overturned) law. I love the crazy idea that the US would go and confiscate gold, but somehow would put the same loophole in the new law, and, what's more, count all these 'Goldline' coins as 'rare'. You guys are asserting a loophole in a law that does not exist yet.
I understand Beck's POV on gold,
Well, it's not that hard to understand why most criminals operate. Money.
Beck is participating the Goldline scam because, duh, he gets a cut of it. Used to be a direct cut, now they're just keeping him on the air.
Re:Cue the crying (Score:4, Informative)
There's not going to be a jobs recovery. A huge big chunk of our economy was dedicated to developing real estate and financing the sale of that development. The value of real estate is just not coming back for decades. Those jobs are permanently gone, just like the textile jobs of yore. There are no replacements in services or in manufacturing. Our technology edge is eroding and as it vanishes, so too will the production of the remaining expensive manufactured goods that we make here.
Gold ATMs are not useful except in the most dire emergencies. If you need to use one, it's already too late. No one is going to sell gold in the midst of a currency crisis. These things exist to take advantage of the fool. The reason they will make money is that even a fool can see that there is a crisis coming, while very few have any good plan for dealing with it.
Re:Already here (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Cue the crying (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not saying it's 150% markup from the value of the gold. It's 150% markup from the value of the coins.
The average Goldline markup is 90%. It goes as high as 208%.
It's a huge increase from the price you'd actually expect to buy the coins from at a rare coin dealer, which have a markup closer to 15%, sometimes 20%.