Liberty Coin & Precious Metals, located in San Diego, CA, is the new kid on the block in terms of national, retail level bullion dealers. They have been around approximately two years, and with their low pricing and stream of online interviews, they should in another two years time be on the top-tier of online bullion dealers for North America.

When SV gave Liberty a try, I spoke with the President of the company, Mark, who handled my purchase. He answered my questions saying that the company would mail the coins out as soon as funds had cleared and that it should not take more than two weeks, but that the USPS was slow. When I asked why the company used USPS and not a private service like UPS or FedEx, he said that he personally chose the Postal Service because it was a federal crime to tamper with the mail. The candid nature of our conversation warmed me up to the company most.

Mark spoke at greater length with me regarding the silver market manipulation and political decay in Washington than any other trader I had ever dealt with. And this coming from an owner! When I mentioned to him that Gainesville Coins was priced .10 cents cheaper than he was on the 10 ounce silver bars I was interested in buying, he went ahead and matched them. He also mentioned that by allowing me to send in a personal check, unlike top priced Gainesville, he was saving me some bank charges, which both of us agreed are no good.

I placed my order and called in once to ensure that my check had made it there, and a south African man, after a bit of digging, assured me that indeed my check had been received two days prior, and so there were eight days left on my ten day hold period. He then went on to explain that they held onto checks for ten days to make sure no payment issues arose.

That day silver had taken a very violent dip to the downside in the early hours of the morning. I asked him what he thought of that, and then he went on a tangent about how the market is manipulated by major banks and that if I went to Kitco’s website I would there see that all currencies were down when pinned against the dollar, and that gold was up in all of those currencies. The US Dollar, though, was up, and thereby gold and silver were manipulated to the downside. “These are the games they play,” he told me.

I thought it was a sign of a confident and budding company that I would, over the phone, be directed to a competitor’s website. Surely, Kitco is out of the country and overpriced, but nonetheless.

About two weeks later I received my silver. Liberty held my check for ten days, as Mark the President had initially explained, and then shipped USPS. I was sent a tracking number when my package shipped, although these do not help much as they merely demonstrate that a package has been received by a specific post office.

The product was new and well-packaged. Not only does Liberty offer some of the cheapest bullion pricing in the nation, but their customer service is friendly and the individuals who work there care about the orders of their customers. For these reasons, Liberty earns an A in my book

Grade: A