Important BullionStar Update: 27 March 2020

Minimum Order – Due to the extreme demand for physical precious metals, we have had to temporarily raise our minimum order for both customer buy and customer sell orders to SGD 2,000.

Customer Orders

– We advise customers to place all buy and sell orders with us online regardless of delivery method. This is to minimise queues at the shop.

– We strongly recommend that local customers select “Shipping by Courier" as delivery method instead of “Personal Collection (Pick-up)". To facilitate for this, we have decreased the shipping cost to SGD 9 flat for domestic shipping/courier service regardless of order amount or weight. Shipping by Courier can also be selected by international customers. International shipping still works thanks to dedicated cargo planes and passenger airlines shifting to cargo shipments. All shipments are fully insured with BullionStar taking the full risk for the shipment until signed for by the customer.

– Alternatively, we recommend customers to select “Vault Storage" for their customer buy orders. All customers placing buy orders for vault storage between 26 March and 30 April will be granted one free vault withdrawal (before 31 December 2020). Vault orders are processed into vault storage with pictures uploaded of your metals within three business days as per normal.

– If other options are not feasible, we continue to allow for “Personal Collection (Pick-up)" at 45 New Bridge Road for customers that need to pick up buy orders or hand over metals for sell orders. Strict safe distancing measures however apply. Out of an abundance of caution and to ensure compliance with measures introduced to minimise the spread of COVID-19, we will only allow 7 customers to enter the premises at any one time. Furthermore, only counters 1, 3 and 5 will be open. Counter 2 and 4 will be closed for safe distancing. There will be a set route for movement at the premises with dedicated waiting spots allowing for generous distance of several meters in between customers and staff. Only customers will be granted access into the shop.

Bullion Inventory & Availability

We continue to have stocks for most products despite the overwhelming demand we have seen lately as our strategy has been to hold much higher inventory levels than our industry peers.

We have prepared for the calamities on the financial markets and in the monetary system for many years and have planned and structured our company accordingly. At the first signs of the imminent shortages, we were decisive and aggressive in increasing our stock levels for precious metals.

We only sell metals we have in stock or metals which are purchased by us, produced by the supplier and on route to us. You can view the availability status on our website. All metals indicated as “In Stock" are available for immediate release/delivery.

Pricing

It’s extremely challenging for us to operate under the current circumstances where the price for physical precious metals has decoupled from the paper LBMA spot and COMEX futures market price. As we have written about several times over the years, paper metals look to become increasingly worthless while only real physical precious metals will hold its proper value.

Price discovery based on paper markets, flawed to begin with, is experiencing cracks in the system – spreads on the paper spot market (as quoted by bullion banks) have been as high as USD 80 per oz the last few days. It’s therefore difficult to ascertain the equilibrium physical market bid/ask price. The premiums and buy/sell spreads are therefore high.

Compared to many of our peers globally, we have still have a significant amount of bullion in stock available for purchase. Metals are now going into hiding. The opportunity to acquire any precious metals with fiat currency is quickly closing amidst extreme demand coupled with an extreme supply shortage happening at the same time.

For customers looking to sell their metals to us, we are currently paying the spot price of silver plus up to 25% for silver coins like Silver Eagles if you sell to us. We are paying up to the spot price of gold + 2% for major gold coins like Gold Maples. We are also paying above the spot price for most gold bars and silver bars. See our sell back prices here.