The most expensive decision in precious metals is one hardly anyone makes consciously. It falls in passing, in a subordinate clause: "Then I'll just sell the silver here and buy it again there."
It sounds sensible. It almost never is. On a serious position, that sentence costs a sum that would have paid for the transport ten times over.
A move is not a disposal
Let us start with the point that carries the whole calculation.
When you have your metal taken to another place, nothing happens economically. There is no buyer, no payment, no change of owner. The same bars, the same serial numbers, the same owner, only a different address. Capital gains tax, however, attaches to exactly that: a disposal, such as selling, giving away or swapping. Where none takes place, none is triggered, and your original base cost stays as it was.
A sale followed by a repurchase is the opposite. It is a real economic transaction, with everything that goes with it: two dealer spreads, a possibly taxable gain on metal that has risen in value since you bought it, and a fresh base cost for the newly bought metal. Anyone who sells an old position and buys back in abroad turns a gain that was only on paper into one that has to be declared.
What a round trip really costs
The dealer spread is the gap between the price at which a dealer buys and the price at which he sells. On a round trip you pay it twice: once when you sell here at the buying price, and once when you buy back in there at the selling price. In between there is no gain, no better position, no advantage. In the end you hold the same metal as before, only less of it.
For gold, this spread is comparatively narrow. For silver, it is considerably wider, and that is no coincidence: silver is bulkier, harder to store, more expensive to insure and more expensive to move, and all of that is in the price a dealer quotes. The very feature that makes moving silver expensive also makes the round trip expensive. The difference is that the transport is paid once and the spread twice.
Then there is a risk that appears in no calculation and is real all the same: between sale and repurchase you are not invested. If the price runs away in those days, you buy back higher than you sold. Anyone moving a large position in one go cannot make up for that with skill.
The case we like best to explain it
A client had a large silver position in Germany and wanted it held outside the EU. His first thought was the obvious one: sell here, buy again there.
Transporting around four hundred kilograms cost about EUR 15,000. Compared with the round trip, he saved a six-figure sum, simply by keeping the same metal.
These figures come from his case, not from a price list. They do not tell you what your move will cost. They tell you the order of magnitude by which the two routes can differ, and that it pays to work out the difference before selling.
From what size of holding it pays off, and when it does not
Here the honest answer is less comfortable than a number: there is no general limit, but there is a simple calculation.
Transport is charged by weight, volume, distance and sum insured. The dealer spread, by contrast, depends on value. Everything else follows from that:
- For gold, the calculation tips early. A kilogram of gold is a handy parcel of very high value. The transport costs hardly matter against the spread, even for medium positions.
- For silver, it tips late. For the same value you move many times the weight and volume. That is why silver needs a considerably larger position before transport is cheaper than the round trip. Once it is, though, the difference is especially large, because the silver spread is wider.
- For very small holdings, it does not pay. Anyone wanting to move a few coins pays more for the professional route than they save. Then the right answer is either to keep the metal where it is, or in future to buy outside the EU straight away instead of moving what you already have.
The calculation you have to make therefore has only two sides. On one side is a specific transport quote for your specific position. On the other is the spread you would actually pay on selling here and buying there, not the spot price, but the prices you would really get. Putting these two figures side by side is an afternoon's work and decides a difference of five to six figures.
And it has to be done beforehand. Anyone who sells first and calculates afterwards has already made the choice.
How a move actually works
In many clients' imagination, this is an adventurous affair. In practice, it is a logistics operation that specialised companies carry out every day.
Step one: collection. A secure logistics company collects the metal where it lies and takes it into a professional high-security vault; for our clients in Germany, that is usually in Frankfurt. This step has a value of its own, because the metal is then inventoried, weighed, checked and insured in a controlled environment, instead of lying in a safe deposit box or a safe in the living room.
Step two: stocktaking. Before anything moves, what is to be moved is recorded. It sounds like a formality, but it is the point where most surprises appear: mixed holdings from decades, coins with a fineness that does not count as investment metal at the destination, bars from refiners not recognised there. What is favoured at the destination and what is not is decided here, not at customs.
Step three: transport from vault to vault. From the vault, the metal travels on as an insured secure transport to the destination. You do not touch the bars, you drive nowhere, you stand at no border. The customs formalities lie with the service provider, who handles them every day.
Step four: storage and proof. At the destination, the metal is received, checked and stored, and you receive proof of it. What form this proof takes, and whether your particular pieces stay allocated to you or are absorbed into a pooled holding, is the really important question. It decides whether you own a bar or a claim against someone. How this differs between the two locations is set out in the articles on bonded warehouses in Switzerland and Liechtenstein and on storage in Singapore.
Why driving it yourself is out for larger holdings
A few coins in the glovebox are a different matter. As soon as a position is large enough to justify the effort, driving it yourself is ruled out for several reasons at once.
In customs terms, you are then an exporter. Goods leaving Great Britain need a customs declaration before they go, and larger consignments a full export declaration through the Customs Declaration Service. That is no prohibition and nothing shady, simply a procedure you have to know and handle correctly. Gold is not cash under the UK's £10,000 cash declaration, but at the EU's external border it is: gold of EUR 10,000 or more must be declared there, in both directions. The details are in our article on gold, customs and the EUR 10,000 rule. And if you travel with it in your luggage, the answer to how much gold you may take with you is in a separate overview.
Physically, it is often simply impossible. Four hundred kilograms of silver is not luggage. It is several pallets that nobody lifts alone, and in an ordinary vehicle they can be neither fitted in nor secured.
And then there is the insurance. This is the point most people driving themselves have never checked. Before you set off, check whether your existing policies cover precious metals in transit at all, up to what sum, under what conditions, and whether they apply abroad. With professional secure transport, the cover is part of the service and is stated in figures before the vehicle leaves. On a private journey, it is a question you have to answer yourself, and you only find out the wrong answer once something has happened.
The insurance question, asked properly
Even on the professional route, it pays to look closely instead of settling for the word "insured". The questions that count:
- What sum does the cover run to, and is it measured against the current metal value or an old valuation?
- Who is the insurer, and does the policy cover all risks or only named ones?
- Does it apply throughout, from collection through transport to storage, or are there gaps at the handover points?
- And at the destination: is the storage cover part of the same contract or a separate policy with its own limits?
These are four questions you settle in one conversation. Asking them costs nothing. Not asking them can cost everything.
What we do
We run neither vaults nor secure transport. Specialists do that, and rightly so.
What we do is the decision that comes first. Does a move pay off compared with what you are planning right now? Which location suits your situation? Which form of safekeeping, and in what form must the metal be for it to be favoured at the destination at all? For the client above, exactly this calculation was the entire value of the consultation. Otherwise he would have paid a six-figure sum in dealer spreads, only to own the same metal in the end.
Then there is the question nobody likes to ask and that affects everyone all the same: what happens to this holding on death, on divorce, on enforcement. A vault abroad is not an end in itself. It is part of a structure and should fit it.
If you want to take an existing position out of the country, this is the conversation worth having, and before you sell anything. Friedrich A. Hennegriff takes the time for it, looks at your holding and your whole situation, and works through both routes.
👉 Book an appointmentFrequently asked questions
Do I pay tax if I move my gold abroad?
Capital gains tax attaches to a disposal: selling, giving away, swapping. Anyone who simply has their metal taken to another place disposes of nothing: there is no buyer, no payment and no change of owner. Your base cost stays as it was. A sale followed by a repurchase, by contrast, is a real transaction, with dealer spreads and possibly a taxable gain.
What does it cost to move precious metals abroad?
That depends on weight, volume, distance and sum insured, not on the metal price. In one case from our practice, moving around four hundred kilograms of silver cost about EUR 15,000. That is not a list price but an order of magnitude from a specific case; the figure only becomes reliable with a quote for your position.
From what quantity does a move pay off?
The line lies where the transport costs fall below the dealer spread of a sale and repurchase. Because transport is charged by weight and volume, while the spread depends on value, the calculation tips much earlier for gold than for silver. Work out both against each other before you sell, not afterwards.
Can't I just drive my precious metals across the border myself?
For small holdings, yes; for serious positions, no. Goods leaving Great Britain need a customs declaration, and larger consignments a full export declaration; arriving in the EU, gold of EUR 10,000 or more must also be declared as cash. On top of that come weight, volume and the question whether a private journey is insured at all.
Do you run the vaults and the transport yourselves?
No. We run neither vaults nor secure transport. Specialised companies do that, and rightly so. We advise on the decision that comes first: which location, which form of safekeeping, what form the metal has to be in, and whether a move pays off compared with what you are planning right now.