Goldshark.com Review
Most readers of this blog will, at some time, have used price comparison websites to seek out the best available deal for a holiday, or flights, or a car rental. There are sites that compare the prices of insurance products, savings accounts, goods available at different supermarkets and so on. The chances are that there is a price comparison site available for any commodity: cost conscious consumers are courted by companies that offer comparison services online. Not only does it save money but it saves time, too. Time of traipsing round the high street shops, or trawling around cyberspace.
Goldshark.com is a website that compares gold and silver prices amongst many dealers. It’s a clean, professional looking site that is easily navigable and displays a “real time” chart for the price of gold on each page. A drawback is that, at present, it only compares prices of US and Canadian coins and bullion products. However, Gold Shark has said that it plans to expand the product range over time.
The prices displayed include a feed of the live price of the precious metal, any premiums applicable, brokerage and shipping fees, as well as credit card surcharges and insurance premiums.
A buyer simply chooses the product range he is interested in, for example Silver Coins, and clicks on it. This will then bring up more detailed options. The four available under the silver coins heading are American Silver Eagle Coins, Silver Canadian Maple Leafs, 1oz Silver Rounds, and 90% Junk Silver Bags.
Clicking on one of these will then take you to the product specific page, where a brief description can be viewed, as well as a link to the relevant Wikipedia page. The best and worst product prices are displayed, and further down the page the quotes from separate dealers offering the product are detailed with links that take you through to the dealer’s own website for the purchase to be made. Each page is accompanied by a video that shows clearly how to use the site, and talks the user through in friendly, easy to understand language.
Gold Shark do not sell the products themselves, but are simply a conduit for potential buyers to find the best price from the 14 dealers that it compares at present. These dealers are listed on a separate page, with each having a BBB (Better Business Bureau) rating, and a link through to its website.
There is also a page that displays charts of the historic prices of gold and silver, which are partially customisable. Its widget page allows owners of other websites to display goldshark.com’s graphics.
There are pages for library articles, a blog type page and press releases. These however are not regularly populated, so information available here is a little haphazard.
Finally, there is the Frequently Asked Questions page. The usual questions are answered in the usual way here, though the question about how Gold Shark receives compensation from the dealers listed on the site is neatly avoided with the answer:
‘Gold Shark is a for profit company. Our business model is similar to Expedia, Priceline, Amazon, or eBay.’
The way to use this site is similar to how users should use all such sites: with caution and as a guide only, followed by more in depth research. Visit sites of dealers independently also. The writer of this article was able to save over $4000 on flights earlier this year by visiting the Expedia site (where they were quoted at $6000), and then searching the cheapest carriers shown on line and booking direct.
Buysilver.org will be bringing its readers reviews of other online silver dealers and price comparison sites, and resources that may be useful to coin collectors, as well as news and views, at regular intervals. Be sure to visit regularly to keep up to date with what’s happening in the world of silver and gold investing, and coin collecting.
