When you buy precious metals, you are not just buying metal. You are also buying the assumption that the other side of the transaction will still exist years from now, that the goods are genuine, and that the deal is properly documented. Price differences between dealers are usually small; differences in trustworthiness are not. What follows is a set of concrete, checkable signals a buyer in Estonia can use to assess a dealer \u2014 without relying on gut feel or advertising copy.<\/p>\n
The first check is the dullest and the most useful: whose name is on the invoice? A trustworthy dealer displays its legal name, registry code, VAT number and a physical address on its website. All of it can be cross-checked against the Estonian business register.<\/p>\n
The law adds a second layer. Under the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Prevention Act<\/a>, a company engaged in buying up or wholesaling precious metals and precious metal products is an obliged entity. It must apply due diligence measures \u2014 identifying and verifying the customer and their representative, establishing the beneficial owner, and understanding the substance of the transaction \u2014 and must produce a risk assessment of its own operations.<\/p>\n In practice this means that on a larger transaction you will<\/em> be asked for identification. If a dealer suggests that “it’s simpler without the paperwork”, that is not a convenience being offered to you \u2014 it is a sign the company is not meeting obligations the law places on it. And a business that skips those will likely skip others.<\/p>\n The value of a gold bar depends on who cast it. The international benchmark is the London Bullion Market Association’s Good Delivery List<\/a> \u2014 refiners accredited to supply bars into the London market.<\/p>\n The bar for entry is high. According to the LBMA, an applicant must have been in existence for at least five years and have refined the relevant metal for at least three, with annual gold refining output of no less than 10 tonnes and tangible net worth of at least \u00a315 million. For gold, the minimum acceptable fineness is 995.0 parts per thousand. Nor is listing permanent: accredited refiners are subject to the LBMA’s ongoing Proactive Monitoring Programme.<\/p>\n For a buyer the conclusion is simple. A bar carrying a recognised accredited refiner’s name, a serial number and an accompanying assay certificate is markedly easier to sell on later. An example from our range is the 100 g Argor-Heraeus gold bar<\/a>. A bar of unknown or unmarked origin is not necessarily bad gold \u2014 but proving that becomes your problem at the moment you want to sell.<\/p>\n In Estonia investment gold is exempt from VAT, but only where it meets the conditions written into law. Under the Value Added Tax Act<\/a>, investment gold means bars or wafers of a weight accepted on the bullion markets with a purity of at least 995 thousandths, and coins minted after 1800 that are or have been legal tender, with a purity of at least 900 thousandths and a selling price no more than 80 per cent above the open market value of the gold they contain.<\/p>\n The same definition comes from the European Union’s special VAT scheme for investment gold<\/a>. Each year Member States notify which coins traded on their territory meet the criteria, and those lists are published in the Official Journal of the European Union.<\/p>\n A trustworthy dealer can tell you whether a given product falls into that category, and their invoice reflects it correctly. Classic examples are the 1 oz Canadian Maple Leaf gold coin<\/a> and the 1 oz Austrian Philharmonic gold coin<\/a> \u2014 both legal tender in their country of origin. If a seller cannot explain why one product is VAT-exempt and another is not, keep asking.<\/p>\n An honest dealer shows you three things at once: the current spot price, the premium on top of it, and what they would pay you today for the same item. The spread between the buy and sell price is the dealer’s margin \u2014 that is not something to be embarrassed about, it is the business model. What should bother you is not the existence of a spread but the concealment of it.<\/p>\n Practical test questions: is the price visible online without registering? Is the buy-back price published, or do you have to turn up in person to find it out? Does the price quoted on the phone survive to the invoice? If a dealer publishes only the selling price and gets vague about buy-backs, you will learn the answer at the exact moment you want to exit \u2014 and by then the negotiating position is not yours.<\/p>\n A shop you can walk into is a form of security in itself. It implies rent, staff, a local reputation and somewhere to take a complaint. A purely online seller may be perfectly sound, but the cost of disappearing is lower.<\/p>\n The same goes for buy-backs. “We buy back too” is a sentence every dealer says. What is checkable is whether they buy back daily at a visible price, whether they accept goods originally sold by other dealers, and whether payment happens on the spot. A dealer who buys back only their own stock and only “by arrangement” is not offering you liquidity \u2014 they are offering you a possibility.<\/p>\n Every transaction should end with an invoice stating the seller’s details, an exact product description, weight, purity and price. With bars, the certificate and serial number are part of the package. This paperwork is not a formality \u2014 it is what evidences provenance when you sell.<\/p>\n2. Whose metal is being sold: LBMA accreditation<\/h2>\n
3. Does the gold actually meet the definition of investment gold?<\/h2>\n
4. Price transparency: spot, premium, bid and ask<\/h2>\n
5. A physical presence and a real buy-back<\/h2>\n
6. Payment and paperwork practices<\/h2>\n