
There's A Gold-Dispensing ATM on West 57th Street - brodd
http://www.scoutingny.com/gold-dispensing-atm-on-west-57th-street/
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LeonM
I have seen more than one of these "vending machines" in Dubai.

Interesting thing is that they constantly adjust the price of the gold bars as
the price of gold fluctuates. I guess these machines need a permanent internet
connection to receive the current gold price.

Who will be the first to do a MITM and adjust the price to 0.001? ;)

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bane
Out of curiosity, other than owning a lump of gold, what exactly are you
supposed to do with it once you have it?

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andrewSC
Talk about how you own a lump of gold, of course.

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euroclydon
Those silver American Eagles make a great, almost magical from the child's
perspective, alternative to the lame-o paper dollar under the pillow when your
kid looses a tooth, but I would recommend working your way up to them as it
gets a little expensive, especially if you have more than one toddler.

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robin_reala
It’d never occurred to me that you’d get a note for a tooth in the US. Would
be an expensive habit in the UK to give notes away.

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chloraphil
Isn't the smallest denomination of a U.K. note £5? In the U.S. it's $1, which
is currently worth about £0.60.

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cbhl
Gee, I got U.S. quarters ($0.25) as a kid.

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vxNsr
same, if I was lucky it was a half dollar.

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sharpneli
You must always take inflation into account in these comparisons.

$0.25 in 1970 has equivalent purchasing power of 1.48$ right now.

And $0.50 in 1985 matches to pretty much exact $1 right now.

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mjb
If you have some time, and are interested in culture, architecture, history or
just New York from an interesting perspective, it's worth reading some more of
Scouting NY. There's a whole lot of very interesting material there, and some
nice photographs too.

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brokentone
Saw this a little while back, the novelty is fun, but the prices are really,
really high.

Silver spot right now is ~$19/oz and they're selling it for $88, a 360%+
markup (granted this is a coin vs a bar).

Gold spot is ~$1260/oz, and their 1oz is $1367, 8.5% markup, their 10g is
$1389/oz, a 10% markup.

If you were interested in gold, you could get from APMEX for $1,336.83/oz
credit, or less for cash. Or from a nice man in the diamond district for spot
plus $50 cash.

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dustcoin
The $88 coin must be a special coin and/or in proof condition. They are
selling an American Silver Eagle for $27 which is still a huge markup, but not
360%.

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mayneack
We now have a bitcoin ATM at MIT.

[https://i.imgur.com/oR6yjEt.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/oR6yjEt.jpg)

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Thriptic
This is in the COOP? Interesting, I should go check it out today.

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mayneack
Yep

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alistairjcbrown
Conceptually, is this an ATM or a vending machine?

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logicallee
Practically, it depends on whether the markup is in line with the spread for
street currency exchange, or in line with vending machine markup versus
wholesale cost of goods.

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lifeformed
I don't understand these. What are people using it for? Is it just for novelty
purposes, and as a promotional tool for gold as an investment?

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NoMoreNicksLeft
Goldbugs like anonymity. You know, in case Obama decides to pull an FDR and
confiscate all their precious Au.

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jrochkind1
Except you have to use an ATM debit card in the machine. If you wanted
anonymity or lack of traceability, I think you'd rather buy with cash,
probably using an actual in-person transaction.

(I don't know if the US or other countries require registering identity of
people buying gold in person in cash? I don't think the US does).

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ef4
Any cash purchase (of anything, not gold in particular) over $10,000 requires
submitting a form to the treasury. Not that that's easy to reliably enforce.

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pavel_lishin
There is also a cupcake ATM: [http://www.sprinkles.com/cupcake-
atm](http://www.sprinkles.com/cupcake-atm)

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GFK_of_xmaspast
When I was a kid we called those 'vending machines'.

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hengheng
Not if it reacts to spot market prices.

I'm sorry.

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supahfly_remix
I like the idea, but feel like I'd get robbed on the way home.

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jacquesm
That could happen with any ATM.

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thisisdave
If someone buys gold from this machine, potential thieves can guarantee that
they'll be carrying at least $255, which is way more than most people take
from ATMs.

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thedufer
People go through a lot of cash in NYC. Most people I know pull $200 at a
time, which is pretty close to that.

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vxNsr
I actually don't understand people who regularly use atms.

If you have access to a bank account then it's not too difficult to get a
credit card and in terms of security a CC is much easier to control than a
bunch of little pieces of paper.

If the plastic gets stolen or lost you can just cancel it and lose nothing
except time (and waiting for a new card to arrive) while with cash you lose it
or it gets stolen -- it's gone.

Just to be clear - a credit card should only be used as a debit card, using it
like free money is only lying to yourself.

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thedufer
The reason I specified NYC is that it (along with other large cities) contains
a number of small businesses that don't take credit cards. Your suggestions
sounds good in practice, but there are a number of services I would lose or
have to travel significantly farther for were I to refuse to carry cash. Cash
is also the easiest way to split checks (most restaurants won't split checks
more than N ways, for some N <= 3) and I frequently eat out in large groups.

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gman129
Problem is as soon as you buy it you lose money. The reason being that if you
want to sell it back you must go to a dealer he will low ball you and you will
have a hard time getting the actual value of the gold. It is not like $100
bill that you could just spend on whatever you want, you are stuck with
something that in order to cash out you must take a cut by selling it to a
dealer.

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pmorici
How is that different than any asset, stock, bond, Bitcoin? The broker always
gets a cut.

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dustcoin
Physical precious metals have some of the worst spreads/fees and friction
involved buying and selling compared to other assets.

Stocks: $5 flat fee per trade is typical, index funds charge as low as 0.05% /
year.

Bonds: Cheap bond index funds charge 0.1% to 0.3% / year. Buying bonds
directly from the treasury carries no fees.

Bitcoin: 0.20-1% fee is typical when purchased online

The only common asset class that is worse in this regard would be real estate,
but unlike precious metals, real estate can at least produce income or provide
utility while it is held.

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pmorici
"Physical precious metals have some of the worst spreads/fees"

Here is a site that buys 1 ounce gold bars for $10 below the current spot
price and sells them for 30 above. that is 0.8% spread on the side a slightly
over 2% on the buy side.

[http://www.goldeneaglecoin.com/topProducts](http://www.goldeneaglecoin.com/topProducts)

Are there bad vendors out there, sure, but they are in every market. Look at
Bitcon ATM's some of those charge fees amounting to 10%

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riffraff
In Bergamo's low-cost-airlines airport (Milan) there has been one of this for
many years. I have never seen anyone using it though.

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brador
Someone in the comments: "what if someone files a chargeback on the card?".
Any thoughts on this? By using the machine you've moved from a reversible
transaction to an ireversible transaction. It looks ripe for scammers to
abuse.

At least at a counter they'd have your face on cam, but with this they don't.

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nandemo
I doubt you could easily initiate a chargeback because: they only accept debit
cards, it's a card-present transaction, and presumably the buyer has to enter
their PIN.

For the sake of the argument, you can still initiate a chargeback even if you
don't claim unauthorized use of your card: e.g. you did make a purchase but
the merchant didn't deliver the product, or the product was defective and the
merchant refused to give you a refund, etc. But I don't think you'll have much
luck trying to claim that a bona-fide financial institution gave you something
that's not gold.

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cmajewsk
There's been one at the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi for a while now...I have
seen people using it.

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Killah911
ATM is a bit of a misnomer isn't it? Can you deposit gold into your "account"
at the machine? If not then it's similar to any other sales kiosk (like the
ones at the airport selling headphones)

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iancarroll
Most ATMs won't let you deposit anyway.

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seanmcdirmid
Any ATM attached to a bank does let you deposit, actually. In the states,
mostly just in envelopes that are counted later, but in China, they actually
count and verify the money in place.

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jdminhbg
I would imagine that there are more ATMs unattached to banks than attached, so
saying "most" ATMs don't take deposits doesn't seem like a stretch to me.

As for deposits, modern ATMs in the US will count bills and also scan and
deposit checks immediately without envelopes.

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seanmcdirmid
TIL! I haven't banked in the states in about 9 years, so I'm horribly out of
touch.

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Continuous
This has been done before in several places before from Dubai to China
[http://whenonearth.net/withdraw-gold-atm-
dubai/](http://whenonearth.net/withdraw-gold-atm-dubai/)

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snake_plissken
I've seen these machines in casinos where the vig is ridiculous, like 15-20%.
This one seems reasonable at 5%.

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lorenzfx
IIRC there is also one in the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas.

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eliben
That guy sure has an awesome job!

