In 1984 I bought a set of gold coins from an investment company that is now defunct. One coin was in a package that showed the coin, the other two were in opaque boxes placed in sealed clear plastic. I've kept them in the house for all this time and decided to sell them yesterday.
I took them to a coin dealer who seemed quite excited to have them and gave me a better price than I had gleaned from a few web sites. This also shows that many people trust others. Each coin was exactly as I received them, one visible and two in boxes that said what they were. I assumed the original dealer had sent me what I ordered, and the buying dealer assumed what I told him.
Today I calculated my rate of return: 3.3375 percent annually! Some good quality stocks return that in annual dividends plus appreciate in value. Many bond funds do even better. Of course, if you could stomach the ups and downs of a company like Apple, your return would have been around 13 percent annually.
Well, the coins are out of the house and won't be stolen or misplaced and I managed to beat the drop in the price of gold by a day. For the dealer's sake, I hope that the price of gold goes up enough soon for him to make some profit.
