Legacy Precious Metals IRA Review
$10,000 funding minimum
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Buyback program ensures quick and easy liquidation at competitive rates.
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Offers online account setup and an easy onboarding process.
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Excellent press and celebrity endorsements, considering this is a relatively new brand.
- Only highlights twelve product offerings — six gold bullion coins and six silver bullion coins — but more may be available.
Company Background
As a newer player, Legacy Precious Metals has relatively few testimonials, and some of their online reputation is less-than-stellar. Add to this a limited selection and no online pricing, and one is left with the impression of a company that covers many bases, but merits thorough due diligence before investing.
Reputation, Reviews, and Achievements
Like many Gold IRA providers, Legacy Precious Metals cloaks itself in star power by foregrounding a murderer’s row of famous endorsers credible in the precious metals space. The star catch is former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich; other endorsers as of this writing include conservative commentator Eric Metaxas and talk radio host Dana Loesch.
Of course, these could be cobrand deals, to be taken with a grain of salt, but celebrities do stake their reputation on the brands they endorse, so they aren’t completely empty — they prefer to hitch their horses to credible companies. Not a guarantee, but helpful.
In addition to celebrity endorsements, Legacy has racked up an impressive quantity of press. The company has been featured in Fox News, Forbes, Bloomberg, Reuters, Newsmax, The Guardian, and more. CEO Charles Thorngren is a regular guest and contributor to podcasts and blogs focused on finance and geoeconomics, and those appearances are highlighted prominently on the front page of the Legacy Precious Metals website.
One of the best indicators of trustworthiness for any company, however, is online social proof in the form of reviews and testimonials in online forums — feedback from actual clients who have no incentive to lie or even say anything at all. In this respect, Legacy Precious Metals has a long way to go. Yes, it’s a newer company … but that puts the onus on them to knock it out of the park early on.
Instead, the company has a lackluster 2.5 stars out of 5 on Trustpilot (from five reviews) and 2.5 out of 5 stars on TrustLink (from three reviews). The situation is somewhat better on Facebook, where the company enjoys a 4.2 star rating out of 5 out of eleven reviews. Still, this isn’t a very strong performance out the gate. Legacy definitely needs to step it up if they want to win business from companies that have been in business longer than them.
Customer Service
The most recent info available shows Legacy to be attentive and prompt with their customer service. The toll-free number is staffed by experts, and the email address info@legacypminvestments.com gets prompt attention. There is no live-chat function on the website.
Bonuses and Incentives
As of this writing, Legacy Precious Metals seems to offer no bonuses or incentives for new clients — no free coin, no free metal. With no minimum investment, this is not entirely surprising. Their selling point is the buyback program, which may be more valuable long-term than any token free gifts.
Fees and Charges
Many Gold IRA providers are cagey about their fees, not publishing them prominently or burying them behind an accordion dropdown in the rarely-updated FAQ (if they disclose them at all). Legacy Precious Metals is in a class by itself, though — its setup fees are not on the website, nor do they seem to exist anywhere in the public sphere. You will have to reach out to a Legacy Precious Metals agent to find out what a Legacy Gold IRA will set you back.
Some of the fees, to be fair, are determined by the custodian and the storage selection. That being said, if the initial setup fees are below a hundred bucks, and the annual fees between one and three hundred, it would be well within the ballpark of its competitors. Keep that in mind as you do your research.
Onboarding
You can become a client of Legacy Precious Metals by calling the toll-free number at the top of the website during business hours. They also include the email address “info@legacypminvesting.com” in the masthead.
In several places you will find a call to action to download a “Free Guide.” When you enter your information, you are taken to a “Thank You” page, thanking you for downloading the free guide. There’ s no download button, but give it a few minutes. An automated email from CEO Charles Thorngren will appear in your inbox with a link to download a twelve-page PDF guide.
Trom the “Thank You” page on the free guide funnel you are also invited to avail yourself of an online application for a new Gold IRA. This is a nice feature — not having to get on the phone with a salesperson before setting up an IRA. If you have decided that Legacy is your provider of choice, you can power forward with the online application.
Minimum Investment
Legacy Precious Metals advertises no minimum funding requirements, and the consensus seems to be that they don’t have one. This is a big mark in their favor, as large funding requirements raise a serious barrier to entry for Gold IRAs. To start with, high minimum funding requirements usually exceed the annual contribution maximum, meaning you need sufficient funds in another qualified retirement account to roll over to the new Gold IRA.
More importantly, no financial advisor recommends that you keep your entire retirement net worth in the form of physical precious metals. 5-10% is the typical recommendation. As such, if you must meet a $10,000 funding requirement for a Gold IRA, you should really have $100,000 in net worth; $20,000 minimum funding requirement, $200,000 net worth, and so on.
Of course, minimum funding could be a hidden requirement that Legacy doesn’t talk about much. Make sure to ask them the question when you are interviewing Legacy amongst other Gold IRA providers.
Product Selection
Legacy Precious Metals does not make a good showing of their selection of precious metal products, all things considered.
To see what selection they advertise, you have to go to tab “Coins” in the header menu. There, you will find a slender selection of six gold coins and six silver coins. Now, these are classic bullion selections that form the cornerstones of most precious metal IRAs — American Eagles, Canadian Maple Leafs, Australian Kangaroos, Austrian Philharmonics, and so on. All rockstar bullion coins. You could do a lot worse.
But no bars or specialty coins are listed among the selection. Additionally, they list no options as far as platinum or palladium bullion. If this is a true representation of their selection, you will find it hard to build a truly diversified precious metals portfolio if you go with Legacy, as metal markets move separately from each other and the IRS allows you to store bullion from all four metals in a Gold IRA. True, gold and silver are the most popular, but exposure to platinum and palladium is an important stabilizing factor for a precious metals IRA.
Of course, Legacy may have access to platinum and palladium products — since this rarer bullion is harder to get, they may simply not advertise so they field fewer questions about it. But as a savvy Gold IRA owner, you should be thinking about diversifying into platinum and palladium and you should be asking about them.
Additionally, the twelve product highlights to be found on the “Coins” page feature one-paragraph descriptions of each product, but they are not clickable links to more detailed pages. Not only is their public selection limited, but the information you can glean about each product from their website is limited too.
Custodial Options
In keeping with its sparse distribution of information, Legacy makes no note of any preferred custodial services. They don’t seem to offer in-house custodial services, so you will most likely have to seek out a third-party custodial service that is willing to partner with Legacy Precious Metals.
If Legacy has no preferred custodial partners, that might not be a slam dunk — some custodians might not work with Legacy. As you go through the onboarding process, make sure to ask about Legacy’s preferred custodians. If they have any, those will be your best bet, especially if you don’t want to make a second job out of vetting these service providers.
Still, do your homework! Even with a custodian that Legacy recommends. Custodial mistakes take money out of your pocket, not the custodian’s. Check reviews and reputation, ask about the fee structure, and make sure the custodian in question has direct experience with Gold IRAs.
Storage Options
Same as with custodial options, Legacy makes no mention of storage options. Many Gold IRA companies have partnerships with IRS-approved depositories. This can be very helpful, since the provider will probably be sending the assets directly to the depository and not to you, so it helps if they do a lot of business with each other.
Ask a Legacy agent about their different storage options. Remember, IRS-compliant storage of assets protected by Gold IRAs must be secure, insured, and subject to audits.
Buyback and Liquidation Policy
Legacy Precious Metals specifically mentions that they offer a buyback program for their own products. That means that if they sell you a product, they guarantee that they will buy it back. They don’t guarantee the price they will offer, or that they will price-match or beat the prices offered by other dealers. However, it does offer some security and comfort knowing that you have at least one guaranteed buyer for the assets you buy.
That being said, the only products listed on the website are highly-liquid and well-respected gold and silver coins, so it’s hard to imagine you will have trouble finding a willing buyer at or close to market rates, even if Legacy were to refuse to buy back their metal for some reason.
Education and Client Empowerment
Legacy Precious Metals has precious little in terms of education. There’s no “Learn” page, no knowledge base, no “Gold and Silver 101.” There’s a separate page for Gold IRAs and Silver IRAs with basic info and a short FAQ.
There’s also a “News” blog and a YouTube channel, but they are rarely updated. All the updates seem to pertain to statements from the CEO on market news and the CEO’s appearance on podcasts and in the media. There isn’t even a ticker or chart with live spot pricing updates. All in all, not the best place for a deep dive into the precious metal markets.
Account Management
There is no obvious account management portal or Cloud-based back end associated with Legacy Precious Metals or its website. People who prefer to have online access to their account details shouldn’t necessarily see that as a deal breaker, though. Legacy is almost certainly not going to be the custodian of your Gold IRA — there’s no evidence that they are even a licensed custodian.
Like many of its contemporaries, they leave the custodianship to a third-party service provider, either one they partner with or one that they don’t directly partner with but can collaborate with. Once you have selected your custodian, it will be on the custodian (in partnership with the storage facility) to give you access to your account, either online or otherwise. If you want easy online account management and monitoring, make sure to find a custodian and a storage facility that will do business with Legacy and offer a robust online back end.
Final Thoughts
As a newer company within the space, Legacy Precious Metals has a ways to go in terms of establishing itself as a trusted player. The lack of consistently positive testimonials online is a big mark against it, but its high-profile endorsements, strong online onboarding process, and the public profile of its CEO are marks in its favor. If you are looking for a gold dealer with no minimum funding requirements for a new Gold IRA, they are certainly worthy of more research.
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