My Visit to APMEX and OneGold

As you can see on the TFMR homepage, I have very few advertisers here at my site. JMBullion has long been a sponsor and a few years ago I added both OneGold and APMEX. Back in January, the nice folks at APMEX invited me to visit their headquarters in Oklahoma City and we were finally able to make it happen yesterday.

First of all, as a precious metal enthusiast, visiting a company like APMEX is sort of like visiting Disneyland as a kid. If you everget a chance to witness the innerworkings of a bullion dealer, I urge you to go for it. What a remarkable experience!

I was hosted by:

Patrick Yip, Director of Online Marketplaces
Arun Venkateshwaran, Director of IT and Business Development

While on site, I also spent time with:

Lee Reichenberger, Director of Operations
Doug Sterk, Chief Financial Officer
Ken Lewis, Chief Executive Officer

So, how did it go?

First of all, as the largest precious metals dealer in the US, their offices consist of 72,000 square feet over four floors and, in what is a tremendous irony, they occupy a building that was originally built in 1926 for the Oklahoma City Federal Reserve. LOLOL.

As visitors, we weren't allowed to take any pictures or video but it was an amazing thing to see with my own eyes. The logistics, software, security and employees needed to make a business like that hum is remarkable to observe in person. There are so many aspects of a precious metals dealer that I'd never even considered before yesterday. Really, really eye-opening.

But the main thing you need to know at this point is that I found the entire operation to be honest, straightforward and trustworthy. All of your metal at OneGold is segregated and each ounce of OneGold digital metal is fully backed with an ounce of physical metal. They have my full faith and confidence and I'm happy to use APMEX for physical delivery and OneGold for ease of purchase, trading and storage.

Of course, this doesn't mean that I don't still endorse and use JMBullion, SDBullion, MilesFrankin, HardAssetsAlliance and a few key other firms. But yesterday was about APMEX and OneGold and I could not have been more impressed.

Lee runs the show in the vault and it is an amazingly efficient operation. As CFO, John makes sure that the financial side of the business, including the hedging that is necessary to manage risk, runs seemlessly. The CEO, Ken Lewis, is a straightforward and honest executive who took time to answer each one of my questions regarding OneGold and how it operates.

And Parick and Arun gladly provided me with copies of all their latest audits. I also left with information on their corporate insurance as well as official silver and gold bar lists from the Royal Canadian Mint, Loomis and the CNT vault in New York.

As stated above, I've endorsed OneGold here since it began two years ago and I am a very satisifed customer. I hold 18 ounces of gold on the platform as well as 1,500 ounces of silver. Holding a portion of my physical metal on the OneGold platform provides me with simple and easy liquidity as well as peace of mind and safety. If you want to know more, I encourage you to listen to any of the podcasts I've recorded with Ken over the past 30 months. They're all listed below:

Of course, you can also just visit the OneGold website for more complete information on how it all works.

Finally and on a personal note, it was great fun to listen to the APMEX Director of Operations tell me about the experience of the first #SilverSqueeze...and then look right at him and tell him that the next wave was coming on May Day. The look on his face was priceless. Sorry, Lee!

And then later in the morning I was sitting with Ken Lewis and he off the cuff mentioned that he'd just heard earlier that another #SilverSqueeze was being planned. You should have heard MrsF giggle when I told him that that was primarily my doing and that I was the one behind this next attempt to ruin his weekend! But Ken's a great guy and he's firmly in our corner.

Many thanks again to everyone at APMEX and OneGold for a fun field trip. I've been a longtime supporter of their businesses and nothing I saw or learned yesterday diminsished my enthusiasm in recommending their services.