I'm new to the stacking world and just bought my first 9 ounces of silver today! I decided to buy silver from a company called ABC bullion here in Sydney Australia and left it on their pool allocated storage. Been telling a few people about it (who have no experience in bullion) some of them reckon I should keep it with me physically rather than leave it with them because they told me some companies just scam you or they can go bankrupt and you don't get anything back. The reason why I left it there is because I didn't want to keep it with me at the moment as I don't know where I would safely store it. Is there any truth to what I was told? What should I do?
Rule #1: Don't tell people about your stack ABC Bullion are one of the biggest, so the chances of them going bust are very low, but not zero. If you want the most secure then use the Perth Mint online depository. It is government backed so is the safest. Pool allocated storage means you don't actually own the metal, you just own an IOU for the metal. Only with fully allocated accounts do they actually store your metal and keep it off the company books so backruptcy administrators can't touch it. If you want to store yourself then realise that any qty of silver worth storing securely is going to be a physically a large amount. You can't easily hide a whole bunch of silver. Gold on the other hand it much smaller and can be concealed in many places. If you want a safe then you need to spend $$$$ on a heavy (like several hundred kg+) TDR type safe, and have it bolted to concrete. Anything less and it's easy to steal. You can get such safes cheap enough 2nd hand, but you need a specialised safe removalist which costs a lot.
Once your stack gets into the kilos the best thing to do is to store it in a good private (non bank) safety deposit box. I recommend Guardian Vaults in Sydney. I use GV in Melbourne and am very happy with them. Only problem is you may find the smallest size SDB's are all taken up as I found out when I wanted one few years ago. But that was GV Melbourne so I don't know about Sydney. May pay to book/go on waiting list for a small one in advance coz as peoples stacks grow they change to a bigger box.
