from Birch Gold Group:
This week, Your News to Know covers:
- Central banks have a new competitor for gold bullion
- Why are the wealthiest investors suddenly insisting on tangible, vaulted gold?
- State Street sees $10,000 gold as Fed’s desperate bluff continues
- You’re being sold digital gold. Are you going to buy it?
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
The rich aren’t just buying gold – they want their gold bars “on the shelf”
The UK’s leading business newspaper Financial Times published one of the more remarkable gold stories I’ve read this year. The headline is The year the rich went wild for gold (not currently paywalled).
As dramatic as the headline sounds, the details are even more interesting.
London bullion dealer Sharps Pixley says its underground vault is so full they’re looking for another site.
Swiss Gold Safe operates six vault locations, and its chief operating officer says every one of them needs to expand.
Renowned Swiss refiner and mint MKS PAMP is planning a substantial new facility aimed specifically at its wealthiest customers. And when I say “wealthiest,” for context, their current “white glove” service has a minimum purchase of $50 million. Yet demand is so high, and the purchases so massive, MKS PAMP intends its new facility for customers who buy gold bullion worth $200 million or more.
Don’t be misled – this isn’t really a story about rich people buying gold. We already knew wealthy families owned gold, and it’s honestly no surprise when truly wealthy people buy anything.
This is a story about two things:
- How much gold they’re accumulating
- What kind of gold they want (and why)
The FT tells us these customers increasingly insist on physical gold bars that are allocated and segregated. That means specific gold bullion bars assigned by serial number to their owner, and stored separately from others’ assets. Some even want the ability to visit their gold in person.
I find that distinction far more interesting than the dollar amounts, impressive as they are. When someone sets invests $50-$200 million in gold and then makes a point of asking, “Which bars are mine, exactly?” they’re telling us something about what they really value.
Not a price on a screen. Not a promise to pay, not a contract or a share of revenue.
Outright ownership of a specific, identifiable and tangible financial asset.
There are practical considerations here. Remember, physical gold bullion requires secure transportation, storage, security, insurance and auditing. Those are not trivial considerations – and explain, to some degree, the general preference for gold commodities futures or gold funds.
Today, though, a growing number of wealthy families have decided that only physical gold bullion will do.
The sheer scale of their buying is visible in the normally quiet business of vaulting. The FT report describes a “global race” for precious-metals storage from Switzerland to Singapore.
Here’s what’s so surprising about this – gold vaults are built to last generations. Gold takes up very little space, so an astonishing amount of value can be stored quite easily. At today’s prices, you could fit about $20 million in gold bars into a shoebox (but at 315 pounds, you wouldn’t be able to pick it up). That $200 million position we mentioned earlier? That takes up about as much space as a carry-on suitcase.
