Silver Gold Bull Gold IRA Review

Silver Gold Bull’s IRA offers a way for newer investors without a sizable bankroll to get started with a precious metals IRA. The company lets you get started with no minimum account size or purchase amount. Meanwhile, the annual ongoing fees here (storage and maintenance) are right in line with those of rivals, so you’re not paying any more than you would elsewhere.

Silver Gold Bull’s strongest feature is the incredibly broad range of gold, silver, platinum and more in bars, coins and rounds as well as other forms. The company receives solid reputational scores from third-party sites, ensuring it’s a reputable place to set up your gold IRA.

At a glance

Available products

The strongest feature of Silver Gold Bull may be its vast range of available products. You’ll find well more than 1,000 listings for gold, silver, platinum and copper in a variety of forms — the usual bars, coins and rounds but also as collectibles, statues and more. You’ll be able to buy metals of various sizes, giving plenty of choice for all budgets. For example, you could buy gold as a 1/10-ounce gold coin up through a 1-kilogram gold bar.

Beyond these basics, you can buy products from a range of sources, including the U.S. Mint, the Royal Canadian Mint, Perth Mint, Royal Mint, Chinese Mint, Mexican Mint and many more. Unlike some rivals’ sites, Silver Gold Bull quotes you a price right on the website and you can put your purchase in your cart.

The downside here is that the selection looks much larger than it seems at first glance. For example, the section on silver coins lists more than 1,500 products, but less than 20 percent of them were actually available at the time of publication. You can click the “notify me” button on the product and receive an email if and when it arrives. It’s a similar situation with other categories such as silver bars or gold bars, where many products are listed but not available. This shouldn’t be a dealbreaker, since you’ll still have literally hundreds of available options, but it can feel somewhat misleading if the cornucopia is not quite as full as it first appears.

Fees

The fees at Silver Gold Bull fall squarely in the middle for gold IRA companies.

• The IRA set-up fee is $50.
• The annual custodial maintenance/management fee is $125.
• The storage fee can be either $100 or $150 at a popular depository. For the lower fee, your precious metals are held in pooled storage, while the higher fee puts your gold in a segregated account.

That puts the ongoing annual costs at $225 to $275 for the gold IRA, not counting the $50 setup fee. These fees apply if you’re using the IRA, but if not, you can avoid them entirely.

Account minimums

One of the more standout features at Silver Gold Bull is that you can get started with no minimum account size and no minimum purchase amount. So you can literally just make your IRA deposit today and begin investing in gold. Of course, you’ll still need to have enough money to buy your gold bar or coin, so you can’t just buy $5 or $10 worth of gold, for example. Unlike rival Augusta Precious Metals, where you need a $50,000 stash to start, Silver Gold Bull makes it easier for investors without a sizable IRA or a 401(k) rollover to put physical gold in an IRA.

That said, it can make sense to start with a larger bankroll when investing in physical gold. With no minimum account size, you could end up paying a sizable fraction of your gold investment just in the ongoing annual fees, so it may make more sense to bring a larger stake to the table to reduce the fees as a percentage of your investment. For example, assuming ongoing yearly fees of $225 on a $7,000 IRA contribution, you’ll pay about 3.2 percent of your investment to fees.

Customer support

Silver Gold Bull’s customer support team are available Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. ET, and you can contact them by phone and email. A robo-chat may be able to answer standard questions, too. Silver Gold Bull responded quickly to our questions, helping show why the company has good ratings on Trustpilot (4.8 out of 5) and a Better Business Bureau rating of A+.

Education

Silver Gold Bull’s website provides a range of articles on investing in gold, silver, platinum and other precious metals as well as pieces on the merits of investing in coins. Those resources can help you decide whether investing in precious metals is worthwhile for your IRA. However, many articles had publication dates of years ago, so a refresh of the content – especially in light of gold’s recent rapid rise – could offer customers more insight into the merits of metals investing.

Editorial Disclaimer: All investors are advised to conduct their own independent research into investment strategies before making an investment decision. In addition, investors are advised that past investment product performance is no guarantee of future price appreciation.