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There's A Gold-Dispensing ATM on West 57th Street
- Continuous 12y agoThis has been done before in several places before from Dubai to China http://whenonearth.net/withdraw-gold-atm-dubai/ http://whenonearth.net/withdraw-gold-atm-dubai/
- alistairjcbrown 12y agoConceptually, is this an ATM or a vending machine?
- logicallee 12y agoPractically, it depends on whether the markup is in line with the spread for street currency exchange, or in line with vending machine markup versus wholesale cost of goods.
- euroclydon 12y agoThose silver American Eagles make a great, almost magical from the child's perspective, alternative to the lame-o paper dollar under the pillow when your kid looses a tooth, but I would recommend working your way up to them as it gets a little expensive, especially if you have more than one toddler.
- robin_reala 12y agoIt’d never occurred to me that you’d get a note for a tooth in the US. Would be an expensive habit in the UK to give notes away.
- Nickoladze 12y agoDepends on the parents. I got half dollar coins, which are rarely used in the US (making them more fun to receive).
- chloraphil 12y agoIsn't the smallest denomination of a U.K. note £5? In the U.S. it's $1, which is currently worth about £0.60.
- cbhl 12y agoGee, I got U.S. quarters ($0.25) as a kid.
- saryant 12y agoThat's what my father did for my brother and I as kids. Every time one of us lost a tooth, we got a silver American Eagle. Then we'd have to put it into a protective sleeve and look up its details in a coin book we had in the house. My brother and I would spend hours looking over every detail of those coins (there's not a lot to do when you're six and living in Wyoming). I always wondered where they came from until I grew up and found my dad's giant suitcase full of coins.
- gtremper 12y agoI remember one night after I lost a tooth where I tried to barricade my bedroom door in order to test if the tooth fairy was real. My parents didn't approve.
- StavrosK 12y agoEver the scientist!
- patrickdavey 12y agoAh, but if you do that of _course_ the fairies won't be able to find you. They come down the chimney and then listen for the sound of a recently fallen tooth. With the door closed they'd not be able to hear it. ;)
- riffraff 12y agoIn Bergamo's low-cost-airlines airport (Milan) there has been one of this for many years. I have never seen anyone using it though.
- LeonM 12y agoI have seen more than one of these "vending machines" in Dubai. Interesting thing is that they constantly adjust the price of the gold bars as the price of gold fluctuates. I guess these machines need a permanent internet connection to receive the current gold price. Who will be the first to do a MITM and adjust the price to 0.001? ;)
- Killah911 12y agoYou'd have to have quite a bit of inside info to do that & given hopefully the designers of the machine had enough forethought to not connect the thing to the open internet. To top that off they may even have programmed it to stop if the price variations get too crazy (99% drop may trigger it).
- mathattack 12y agoI expect that the commission they charge is fairly hefty too. They'd also need solid physical security.
- phpnode 12y agoThese machines likely contain very small inventories, the value of their contents is almost certainly exceeded by a typical ATM.
- mathattack 12y agoI would think it's less traceable though, no? This is not coming from any industry knowledge, but I would think that an ATM would know the bill #s, so if you stole it, the bills would be tagged. You can always melt the gold. But this isn't based on any practical knowledge.
- pessimizer 12y agoYou're making the mistake of assuming that the people who built it are as competent as you are when you're relaxed and posting on HN, rather than being the lowest bidder and/or somebody's cousin and/or having a two-week deadline. It's probably implemented in javascript + nodejs w/mongodb.
- cmajewsk 12y agoThere's been one at the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi for a while now...I have seen people using it.
- Killah911 12y agoATM is a bit of a misnomer isn't it? Can you deposit gold into your "account" at the machine? If not then it's similar to any other sales kiosk (like the ones at the airport selling headphones)
- mseebach 12y agoI'm pretty sure "ATM" is in common use to describe machines that will only let you withdraw cash.
- iancarroll 12y agoMost ATMs won't let you deposit anyway.
- seanmcdirmid 12y agoAny ATM attached to a bank does let you deposit, actually. In the states, mostly just in envelopes that are counted later, but in China, they actually count and verify the money in place.
- iancarroll 12y agoSome, not all.
- jdminhbg 12y agoI would imagine that there are more ATMs unattached to banks than attached, so saying "most" ATMs don't take deposits doesn't seem like a stretch to me. As for deposits, modern ATMs in the US will count bills and also scan and deposit checks immediately without envelopes.
- seanmcdirmid 12y agoTIL! I haven't banked in the states in about 9 years, so I'm horribly out of touch.
- blang 12y ago
- supahfly_remix 12y agoI like the idea, but feel like I'd get robbed on the way home.
- jacquesm 12y agoThat could happen with any ATM.
- thisisdave 12y agoIf someone buys gold from this machine, potential thieves can guarantee that they'll be carrying at least $255, which is way more than most people take from ATMs.
- thedufer 12y agoPeople go through a lot of cash in NYC. Most people I know pull $200 at a time, which is pretty close to that.
- vxNsr 12y agoI actually don't understand people who regularly use atms. If you have access to a bank account then it's not too difficult to get a credit card and in terms of security a CC is much easier to control than a bunch of little pieces of paper. If the plastic gets stolen or lost you can just cancel it and lose nothing except time (and waiting for a new card to arrive) while with cash you lose it or it gets stolen -- it's gone. Just to be clear - a credit card should only be used as a debit card, using it like free money is only lying to yourself.
- sgarman 12y agoIn SF half the places I go only take cash - so it's not always an option to use credit. Wish it was though.
- thedufer 12y agoThe reason I specified NYC is that it (along with other large cities) contains a number of small businesses that don't take credit cards. Your suggestions sounds good in practice, but there are a number of services I would lose or have to travel significantly farther for were I to refuse to carry cash. Cash is also the easiest way to split checks (most restaurants won't split checks more than N ways, for some N <= 3) and I frequently eat out in large groups.
- mjb 12y agoIf you have some time, and are interested in culture, architecture, history or just New York from an interesting perspective, it's worth reading some more of Scouting NY. There's a whole lot of very interesting material there, and some nice photographs too.
- lifeformed 12y agoI don't understand these. What are people using it for? Is it just for novelty purposes, and as a promotional tool for gold as an investment?
- seanmcdirmid 12y agoThey are probably shooting at the Chinese market. When you live in a dysfunctional country, gold is consider a useful investment.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 12y agoGoldbugs like anonymity. You know, in case Obama decides to pull an FDR and confiscate all their precious Au.
- jrochkind1 12y agoExcept you have to use an ATM debit card in the machine. If you wanted anonymity or lack of traceability, I think you'd rather buy with cash, probably using an actual in-person transaction. (I don't know if the US or other countries require registering identity of people buying gold in person in cash? I don't think the US does).
- pavel_lishin 12y agoYou could always offer cash to passers-by to use their debit card to make the purchase.
- ef4 12y agoAny cash purchase (of anything, not gold in particular) over $10,000 requires submitting a form to the treasury. Not that that's easy to reliably enforce.
- brador 12y agoSomeone in the comments: "what if someone files a chargeback on the card?". Any thoughts on this? By using the machine you've moved from a reversible transaction to an ireversible transaction. It looks ripe for scammers to abuse. At least at a counter they'd have your face on cam, but with this they don't.
- nandemo 12y agoI doubt you could easily initiate a chargeback because: they only accept debit cards, it's a card-present transaction, and presumably the buyer has to enter their PIN. For the sake of the argument, you can still initiate a chargeback even if you don't claim unauthorized use of your card: e.g. you did make a purchase but the merchant didn't deliver the product, or the product was defective and the merchant refused to give you a refund, etc. But I don't think you'll have much luck trying to claim that a bona-fide financial institution gave you something that's not gold.
- pmorici 12y agoThey probably have a camera on the thing that they could go back and get the the photo of the person who did the transaction.
- mindslight 12y agoUntil banks begin routinely scan serial numbers of all incoming notes (and the implications of this filter through to merchants), gold and cash are about equally hard.
- ef4 12y agoThey don't accept credit cards, only debit cards. So it has the same properties as a normal ATM. You can't take cash out of an ATM and then issue a chargeback.
- mayneack 12y agoWe now have a bitcoin ATM at MIT. https://i.imgur.com/oR6yjEt.jpg https://i.imgur.com/oR6yjEt.jpg
- lorenzfx 12y agoIIRC there is also one in the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas.
- snake_plissken 12y agoI've seen these machines in casinos where the vig is ridiculous, like 15-20%. This one seems reasonable at 5%.
- pavel_lishin 12y agoThere is also a cupcake ATM: http://www.sprinkles.com/cupcake-atm http://www.sprinkles.com/cupcake-atm
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y agoWhen I was a kid we called those 'vending machines'.
- hengheng 12y agoNot if it reacts to spot market prices. I'm sorry.
- gman129 12y agoProblem is as soon as you buy it you lose money. The reason being that if you want to sell it back you must go to a dealer he will low ball you and you will have a hard time getting the actual value of the gold. It is not like $100 bill that you could just spend on whatever you want, you are stuck with something that in order to cash out you must take a cut by selling it to a dealer.
- pmorici 12y agoHow is that different than any asset, stock, bond, Bitcoin? The broker always gets a cut.
- dustcoin 12y agoPhysical precious metals have some of the worst spreads/fees and friction involved buying and selling compared to other assets. Stocks: $5 flat fee per trade is typical, index funds charge as low as 0.05% / year. Bonds: Cheap bond index funds charge 0.1% to 0.3% / year. Buying bonds directly from the treasury carries no fees. Bitcoin: 0.20-1% fee is typical when purchased online The only common asset class that is worse in this regard would be real estate, but unlike precious metals, real estate can at least produce income or provide utility while it is held.
- pmorici 12y ago"Physical precious metals have some of the worst spreads/fees" Here is a site that buys 1 ounce gold bars for $10 below the current spot price and sells them for 30 above. that is 0.8% spread on the side a slightly over 2% on the buy side. http://www.goldeneaglecoin.com/topProducts http://www.goldeneaglecoin.com/topProducts Are there bad vendors out there, sure, but they are in every market. Look at Bitcon ATM's some of those charge fees amounting to 10%
- eliben 12y agoThat guy sure has an awesome job!
- brokentone 12y agoSaw this a little while back, the novelty is fun, but the prices are really, really high. Silver spot right now is ~$19/oz and they're selling it for $88, a 360%+ markup (granted this is a coin vs a bar). Gold spot is ~$1260/oz, and their 1oz is $1367, 8.5% markup, their 10g is $1389/oz, a 10% markup. If you were interested in gold, you could get from APMEX for $1,336.83/oz credit, or less for cash. Or from a nice man in the diamond district for spot plus $50 cash.
- TylerE 12y ago1oz Gold coin on APMEX is $1367,
- dustcoin 12y agoThe $88 coin must be a special coin and/or in proof condition. They are selling an American Silver Eagle for $27 which is still a huge markup, but not 360%.
- Domenic_S 12y agoHmm, the picture showed ASEs at $27 which is a touch pricey (single ASEs you can probably pick up for spot + $5-10).