AARP Article on Gold Scams
TigersFan2
Posts: 1,442 ✭✭
Although old enough to join, I refuse to join AARP because I don't care where they make political contributions with the dues. But a friend has alerted to me an article they've recently published on "old people being scammed by gold dealers."
AARP Article
AARP Article
I love the 3 P's: PB&J, PBR and PCGS.
0
Comments
You can just as easily buy fake gold coins, fake gold bars and ingots, and a dung heap of a mining company share(s).
And it would not be unusual to buy numismatic gold coins from dealer X, and take them down to any of your local shops and get offered X-20% to X-50% the next day. That's often how things work. Let's not blame it all on numismatic coins. The PM market was crushed from April 2013 to December 2015. And it's also easy to lump all the scammers and non-scammers into the worst PM market of the past couple decades. Mining shares fell 82-98%. Yeah, those would have been a good thing to be into (ie the numismatic coins at a 35% markup would have probably done better).
Scammers operate in stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities, real estate, and collectibles of all types. But reading these articles from time to time you'd think it was just gold and silver that are the "bad boys." Nope, old people never get scammed in real estate, reverse mortgages, refi's, life insurance, annuities, stock brokers, checking or savings accounts emptied, soc sec checks stolen, etc. It only happens from gold dealers.
So this person never initially inspected what they were sent? And a few months later they looked at the coins and were aghast because they had 1) different dates and 2) they looked dull and worn. So now they were full-fledged numismatists, by psychic ability I suppose. Why didn't they have these concerns upon receipt of the coins when gold was $300 higher? They bought the coins in December 2012 when gold was on the way down from the Sept 2012 high at $1795. I supposed the April 2013 crash from $1650 to $1321 probably got their attention. By June, $1180 was hit. Blame the market, not the seller. They bought gold at about the worse possible time. It's just simpler to blame the dealer. So what would AARP have recommended for this person as an investment in Dec 2012? Would AARP have recommended gold in 1999-2001? Not likely I suppose. AARP apparently is ok with paper gold like GLD. Have they investigated the chain of ownership and custodian/sub-custodians of that that fund? I suppose not.
A friend of mine, not a senior, bought gold and silver in August 2011 at $1750 gold/$38 silver. I cautioned them not to. They asked me for some reputable dealer names to buy from. Since they were dead set on it, I linked them up with wholesale levels on both so at least they didn't take an initial 5-10% hit. They got in on gold at a 1-2% mark up and silver around 2-3%. A year later in Sept 2012 when gold was over $1735 and rising, I suggested they bail out at the Long Beach show. They didn't want anything to do with that. By the end of that week it was over $1790 and they still didn't want out knowing they were at a slight profit. They held on for 4 years....all the way to the bottom. AARP would probably blame the dealers and gold.
Like the previous commenter said, scams abound anywhere where people are making investments.
My viewpoint of the article is that it tries to scream "caution" and perpetuate the myth that everyone is out to rip-off senior citizens. The article was very short on facts and very long on anecdotes. If the writer wants to write an article on the scams in the numismatic business, they should begin with the tv shopping networks and the overpriced merchandise being peddled there with half-truths and hype.
Like the previous commenter said, scams abound anywhere where people are making investments.
The objective of many scammers is to rip off senior citizens with early stage dementia. These people are easily confused and are easy targets for slick talking pitchmen (or women.) In the past several weeks I have received two scam phone calls (both the IRS scam) and two email scams supposedly from banks. No, they didn't fool me.
This past weekend I was visiting my mother and she received the IRS scam phone call while I was there. No, she wasn't fooled either.
Scammers are scum and deserve to be treated as such.
And, it is not just senior citizens being ripped off... I have personally known many who have been taken in all three areas.... and, as I have posted before, they get angry with the person telling them they have been scammed.... Cheers, RickO
1996,1997,2000