Costco shoppers are snapping up gold bars
Costco (COST) is selling out of 1oz gold bars. The gold bars are currently going for nearly $2,000 and are available online-only for members of the wholesale club. Many are looking at physical gold as means of investment—but some members of the Yahoo Finance Live roundtable are not convinced.
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Video Transcript
- You know how you can get gas and groceries at Costco? Well, apparently, you can also get gold. Gold bars.
- Gold?
- Yes.
- I'm on edge.
- Yes. Exactly. I want in on this, but you have to be a member. So the deal is, apparently, they've been selling gold bars. And this is something that came up in their recent earnings call. The CFO talked about this. It was a small point made in the earnings call. Look, they're selling one ounce gold bars they've been selling out in hours, apparently.
Costco CFO said, I've gotten a couple of calls that people have seen online. We've been selling one ounce gold bars. Yes. But when we load them on the site, they're typically gone within a few hours. And we limit two per member. So they've been selling for just shy of 2,000 bucks. So around 1,900 for an ounce. Close to what they're trading for, right, Pras?
- Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah.
- I do want to bring up this full screen right here, this graphic. Bob Iaccino, when I reached out to him, I said, what exactly is this lure behind people wanting to go to gold? He said that, really, people are looking for gold specifically. And getting gold from Costco and in many consumers' minds they would want to assure that they're getting exactly what's described.
Now, Costco has really been ramping up in recent years, gaining momentum as consumers are looking for value. He called it brilliant. He said he wouldn't even restrict it. They can only buy two right now. But he said he wouldn't even restrict it per member. It's also important to note here that it's only online where people can buy it. And then as you just said, they sell out within two hours.
- They sell out. It's sold out.
- Physical gold is such a crazy thing to own as like an inflation hedge. You can buy ETFs, guys. You can buy as much gold as you want on an exchange.
- But he said that with Costco, it's a reliable name. People are less likely to go to their financial advisors. This is Bob saying this.
- But physical gold? You don't need to have like-- what, do you put it in a vault in your basement?
- Some people think they do. The off the grid people, they think they need it.
- You're going to shave the little shavings off the paint.
- It's risk off right now.
- Here's my Starbucks shake. Here's a little couple shavings of gold.
- Exactly.
- Look at TikTok. Make a TikTok account. Look many videos people are uploading right now saying, hey, I bought gold at Costco, and this is actually helping me build wealth.
- It's very fascinating.
- I saw it in a Reddit thread.
- So this is a big thing, right?
- This is a big thing. Yeah.
- This is a thing.
- But I don't exactly know how they drop them or when they drop them. I don't know if there's some sort of method behind that. But what I do love on the Costco calls is that Richard Galanti, the CFO there, just sort of drops his quick wealths of knowledge. Oh, by the way, [INTERPOSING VOICES]
- By the way, we have gold.
- --we'll just mention that. By the way, we have gold. And it's like this insight into anything you really want to know.
- Like just like an aside, huh.
- A side hustle that Costco is doing. Forget the hot dogs. Forget the beers.
- I know. Exactly.
- This is the new thing that Costco is pushing.
- Exactly. That's right. Costco's got gas, groceries, and gold.
