Scott Green

If I ever want to become stinking rich, I need to spend all my money.  This is according to my radio, which implores me to buy as much gold as I can get my hands on.  Via commercials from Goldline International, Inc.:

“GOLD!  It’s the soundest investment you can make, moreso even than collector plates.  But now a secret stash of GOLD COINS has been found.  Our CEO purchased a couch at Ben Bernancke’s GARAGE SALE, and under the CUSHIONS were SEVERAL THOUSAND GOLD COINS.  GRANTED, most were FILLED WITH CHOCOLATE to commemorate HANNUKAH, the Jewish FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS.  GOLD COINS are the BEST investment you can make because they’re so SHINY.  If it was good enough for PIRATES, it’s good enough for YOU!  GOLD!”

The implication is that Goldline is selling gold coins at a loss, so I had to visit the company’s Web site, which features photographs of noted trustworthy Americans Franklin Delano Roosevent and Glenn Beck.  A one-ounce “American Eagle Gold Coin” was listed at $1201.50, but I wanted some hard answers before investing money I’d yet to borrow.  So I called them via their toll-free phone number, which they registered because it takes money to give money away.

A recorded message told me to stay on the line to be connected to my “own personal account executive,” which turned out to be a guy named Gino.  Gino didn’t sound like an executive; he sounded like a guy working a dead-end phone bank job.  His name made me wonder if Goldline’s business model was based on finding coins that fell off the backs of trucks.

“The one-ounce American Eagle Gold Coin,” I asked, “is that a standard ounce or a troy ounce?”  This was important because gold, as a commodity, is traded in troy ounces, about 31 grams.  Standard ounces are closer to 28 grams, so if Goldline were listing troy ounce commodity prices and selling standard ounces, they’d be making about a ten percent profit right there.

Gino said something about how the standard is to measure gold in troy ounces, and I guess I could have pressed on why Goldline lists coins’ weights in “oz” instead of the standard abbreviation for a troy ounce, “ozt,” but I was too excited about all the money I was about to make.

I had one more question:  is the one-ounce coin solid gold?  No, Gino said, it was 22-karat, which he explained means it’s about 91% pure.  “Thank you,” I said, but my personal account executive had already hung up.

Technically, a troy ounce of gold was worth approximately $1,121 in the commodities market at the time I called.  And yes, technically, Goldline was selling the coin for more than $1,200, which meant it might have been a better idea to call a commodities broker.  But is a commodities broker trustworthy enough to be allowed to purchase airtime on the Glenn Beck radio program?  Does a commodities broker provide Gino?

But I think I’m ultimately going to have to pass on Goldline’s generous offer, because my cash is tied up in other investments.  The government has released a limited number of copper-plated precision-struck Abraham Lincoln commemorative coins, and I bought several thousand from Lincolnline, Inc., for $5 apiece.

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