Costco is known as a place where you can get bargain prices on everything from food to luggage, appliances to gold bars.
Wait, gold bars?
Yes, the storage giant is your one-stop shop for one-ounce gold PAMP Suisse Lady Fortuna Veriscan bars, beautifully detailed and ready for purchase.
They’re available for the bargain price of… well, you have to be a member to know that, but apparently they recently sold for just under $1,900, according to chatter on Reddit. Find gold most recently it went for $1,876.56 an ounce on Wednesday afternoon.
Regardless of the price, gold is selling like hotcakes, according to Tuesday’s responses Costco CFO Richard Galanti. During the company’s quarterly earnings call, Galanti said the bars are in high demand and don’t last long if in stock.
“I’ve had a few calls saying people have seen online that we’ve been selling one-ounce gold bars,” he said. “Yes, but when we load them onto the site they are usually gone within a few hours and we limit ourselves to two per member.”
Costco sells 1 ounce gold bars.
Costco
A few key takeaways from that thought: The bars are indeed only available online, and only if you’re a Costco member, which costs $120 or $60 a year, depending on which program you choose. The retailer also limits purchases to two per customer, meaning it would be quite difficult to build a position that would lead to financial security.
But at the very least, it’s an effective promotion that could appeal to a certain sector of Costco’s retail clientele, says Jonathan Rose, co-founder of Genesis Gold Group.
Rose noted that the company appears to have accelerated its offerings of dried foods and other survivalist goods at a time when concerns about the future are running high. For example, the company is marketing an emergency food prep kit with 150 servings that could come in handy, just in case. Gold suits those types of products.
“They’ve done their market research. I think it’s a really smart way to get their name in the news and get great publicity,” he said. “There’s definitely an intersection between people living off the land, being self-sufficient and believing in their own currency. That’s the appeal of gold as a safe haven when people lose confidence in the U.S. dollar.”
Gold futures, last 5 years
Precious metals have been on the rise in recent years. Gold has risen more than 15% in the past year and more than 55% in the past five years.
With inflation still high, banks under regulatory scrutiny and looming problems in the commercial real estate market, the safe haven aspect of gold and silver should be strong, Rose said.
“We know what the roadmap looks like: bank failures, commercial loans going bankrupt at an alarming rate… they don’t seem to have a handle on inflation, and that’s why they keep raising rates,” he said. “The prospects for market stability are not good and people want a tangle of assets that will be a safe haven. That’s what gold and silver provide.”