HomeCrime and FraudHow does $40M of Gold and Silver Disappear: The Collapse of Tulving...

How does $40M of Gold and Silver Disappear: The Collapse of Tulving Company

By About.Agexclusively for CoinWeek….
Author’s Note: If you have done business with Tulving and are owed metal or money, or if you received metal or money from Tulving after December 9, 2013, please go to my site for assistance. Otherwise, please enjoy the article.

The Tulving Company, one of the first names many people think of when recommending bullion dealers, shut down on March 3, 2014, and declared bankruptcy a week later. By itself, that would be big news. But by my calculations, when they shut down, they owed upwards of 1,000 customers about $40M.

In August, 2011 they claimed an inventory of silver worth $25,000,000. Today, their inventory is worth less than $50,000, and they may owe as much as $40,000,000. How in the world could that have happened?

I have been following the Tulving saga closely since last October, and kept notes and observations on my blog About.Ag. I’ve been asked by CoinWeek to write this piece to discuss what I’ve observed and what’s happening now.

The Early Signs of Problems

silver_barsThrough forensic research, August, 2011 seems to be where the story really starts. But my involvement in this saga started back in December, 2012, when I bought some silver bars from them. I didn’t even think about doing any research online, as I had ordered from them in the past, and had full trust in the company. In the past, I would order, and get my metal no more than a couple days after they got my money. I’m not special; The Tulving Company has done business with some 28,000 other customers, and most had the same experiences I did. But this time, something wasn’t quite right.

This time, I waited nearly 3 weeks to get my metal. The order taker told me it would take a few weeks, so it didn’t come as a huge surprise. I figured they were probably doing booming business. Little did I know that they likely had already lost $25M of inventory by that time, and had start dipping into customer funds. In other words, although I got my silver, it was by pure luck.

Fortunately, I was suspicious. I don’t consider myself paranoid, but I do believe in Ronald Reagan’s “Trust, but verify.” I looked at the Better Business Bureau (BBB) reports, and saw a big uptick in complaints, from 1 every 6 months to 8 within 6 months. In a private forum, I wrote “So the first sign of trouble with a business like this, in my opinion, would be a noticeable change in delivery times and “juggling” orders.” At that point, I did not think they had a problem. But even if I had, I would have had no clue how monstrous a problem it would become.

The general consensus on the forum that I wrote on was that all was well. One person got their order in 2 days. And someone said that Tulving was claiming that their insurance limited how much they could send per day. And some pointed out that everyone who has ordered from Tulving has eventually received their metal.

Tulving was on my radar, but not something I paid much attention to. In July, 2013 I checked the BBB website again, and there were just 2 complaints since March. It did not seem like anything worth being concerned about. Boy, was I wrong. Hannes Tulving, Jr., sole owner of The Tulving Company, certainly knew at this point that the situation was beyond hope.

September, 2013 – Stories Start to Surface

Finally in September, 2013, stories started getting out about delays at The Tulving Company. Someone claimed they had sent $200,000 to Tulving five months prior, and had not received any metal yet. The problem with Internet forums, however, is that while they are great at getting information out, they are nearly anonymous. Some of the early complainers were accused of being shills from competitors. Those that had done business with Tulving before would back up the company, recalling times they had gotten their orders very quickly. Nobody really knew who or what to believe.

bbbI decided to spend a few minutes back at the BBB website to see where things stood. There was a noticeable change this time, with 18 complaints in 2 months. Not to the point of screaming “scam!”, but enough that I really started to take notice. In the private forum I mentioned, I explained that I was confused because “it doesn’t fit what I would expect the 2 most plausible fraud scenarios to be: [1] funding his retirement, or [2] ponzi scheme funding a flashy lifestyle (ala Bernie Madoff).”

At that point, I knew there was a problem. From the many reports that Hannes was picking and choosing which orders to ship each day, I thought maybe he was simply unable to properly manage the business anymore. Perhaps he needed some extra people to help ship orders, perhaps his health had deteriorated. After 20 years of impeccable service, it was hard to imagine the worst.

What I should have focused on at the time was the length of the delays: even in June, 2013 and July, 2013, the average delays reported were 7-8 weeks. The FTC does not allow companies to take orders if they know they cannot ship it within the timeframe they specify (or 30 days, if no time is specified). And Hannes himself stated in his FAQ that he believes taking over 30 days to deliver is a futures contract, which he is not allowed to sell.

My “Aha!” moment was in October, 2013, when someone reported that she sent Tulving 220 ounces of gold to Tulving, and couldn’t get them to pay her. It’s one thing to delay bullion (there could be delays due to drop-shippers, metal shortages, insurance limits, heavy volume, etc.). But I realized that the inability to pay cash was the smoking gun, since he should have had a huge amount of money sitting in the bank from all the delayed orders.

It slowly dawned on me that The Tulving Company had a massive backlog of orders worth many millions of dollars that they would not be able to fulfill. I knew this was not going to have a pretty ending, I knew that something was terribly wrong. In a number of cases, people had trusted The Tulving Company with their life savings. Worse, I had recommended Tulving to many people over the years. I had to do something, I had to let people know.

Getting The Word Out

Gold CoinsI run a website primarily for silver investors. This is how I started to get the word out. I quickly put together a page explaining what I thought was going on at The Tulving Company. With enough detail to hopefully convince people that if they placed an order with Tulving, they might not get it. I hoped they would read about 4 contradictory statements Tulving made on their website, and realize something was wrong.

Over the coming months, I painstakingly gathered information on every complaint I could find, and created a chart showing month by month how many complaints there were, and the average delay each month. I would update the statistics every few days. My main sources of information were the BBB and the Business Consumer Alliance (BCA) websites. It seemed like every time I checked those sites, there were more complaints.

Not a lot of people visited the page at the beginning. Many people just didn’t bother following links to the page, many never encountered links to it. No websites that follow gold and silver news wanted to write anything negative about Tulving, so there were no articles to link to my site. Word spread mostly through forums (but even the forums were sometimes censored, as was the case at Kitco). My guess is that the websites that cover gold and silver news were afraid of getting sued for libel. I may have flirted close to the boundary of libel, but the potential benefits to those risking their money with Tulving far outweighed the risks to me.

By the end of November, The Tulving Company had racked up over 150 complaints, and by the end of 2013 they had nearly 250 complaints.

Despite all the complaints, on some Internet forums people would still defend Tulving, saying that Tulving was probably very busy with a heavy volume of orders, or that there really were insurance limits preventing them from sending the metal. Even for about a week after I reported that Tulving had shut down, many people refused to believe it (“Their website is still there!” and “Their voicemail still picks up!”).

The problem before they shut down, however, was that it was impossible to know if Tulving could recover. They implied that all was well on their end (for example, that their insurance limited how much they could send per day), which meant that (in theory at least) they could have had the cash in the bank to fulfill all the orders. The delays were proven well enough to give me reason to get the word out potential customers to stop doing business with Tulving. But there wasn’t quite enough evidence to lean on the authorities to get this to stop (beyond just having people file complaints).

Word of my coverage of Tulving increased on January 27, 2014. Somehow, word just got out, and started spreading quickly, with my web page on Tulving getting 20 times as many hits as the day before.

A Crack In the Wall

Tulving’s new business model (waiting for cash from new orders to pay for old orders) was of course doomed to fail. Similar to a Ponzi scheme, he could only keep it going as long as new orders exceeded the what he needed to ship.

From around October, 2013 to January, 2014, Hannes had been following a very predictable pattern. Each week, he would get money from new orders, and each week he would respond to complaints with a date that the order would ship by (“Customer’s order will ship by Friday, Dec 13th, 2013. Thanks, The Tulving Company, Inc.”). Presumably, any extra money would be used to ship other backlogged orders, in an order only known to Hannes.

On January 31, 2014, I discovered that there were 2 BBB complaints where Tulving had promised to ship the metal by a certain date, but did not. It’s one thing to miss a shipping date you promise to a customer, it’s a very different thing to miss a shipping date you promise to the BBB. Barring exceptional circumstances, it proves your company has serious problems.

The Tipping Point

On February 19, 2014, I posted on my website that The Tulving Company had reached ‘The Tipping Point.’

As I described above, he could only keep this game alive as long as new order volume exceeded what he needed to ship.

I started collecting invoice numbers from many Tulving customers. Every time Tulving would take an order, they would increase the invoice number by 1. From the invoice numbers, I could therefore deduce how many orders they were getting each day. And what I saw was disturbing: the number of new orders per day had decreased to about the number of complaints per day. Unless Tulving had a magic way of reducing complaints or increasing his business, it could not continue much longer.

While I could sense the end was near, I didn’t quite realize how near.

The End

tulvingOn February 28, 2014, I reported that The Tulving Company was effectively out of business.

This was pretty easy for me to figure out; I noticed that Hannes had stopped responding to BBB complaints. The only way he was able to keep his business alive was by responding to complaints with a promised shipping date, and shipping out those orders on time.

By now, I was getting very frustrated that The Tulving Company was continuing to take orders. I even put out a public plea to Hannes on March 2, 2014 – “could you please do the right thing, and either file bankruptcy or if you are not insolvent come clean and explain the situation?”

Apparently, Hannes was listening. The next morning, March 3, 2014, The Tulving Company ceased operations. The website was left up, and the answering machine would play their off-hours message – just enough to convince the skeptics that Tulving had not shut down.

After closing, a class action lawsuit was filed on March 6, and a judge approved the freezing of The Tulving Company’s bank account on March 10.

On March 10, The Tulving Company filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition. Around this same time, Hannes Tulving, Jr. moved packed up and reportedly went into hiding.

We soon find out that the Secret Service seized Tulving’s records, on behalf of the U.S. Attorney.

Gold? Silver? Cash?

If you’ve read this far, you must be wondering how much money or metal is involved, and where it all is. If you do not price your products properly, you can lose money. But how in the world can you lose $40M of your customer’s money?

Well, that’s exactly what I and all of Tulving’s customers want to know. Only Hannes knows for certain, but there surely are some clues.

From its beginnings in 1990 through 2011, The Tulving Company certainly appeared to be a viable business. A company cannot last that long if they cannot make a profit. But in 2011, things changed.

$25M of Silver Disappears in 7 Months

On August 23, 2011, The Tulving Company claimed they had 600,000 ounces of silver in stock, with a value of $25M. By December 29, 2011, they only claimed 300,000 ounces of silver in stock. By March 14, 2012, their inventory showed about 12,000 ounces of silver in stock. On June 6, 2012, someone claims that The Tulving Company stated that they “they don’t have the merchandise in their actual possession for insurance reasons.”

In 7 months, it seems that The Tulving Company went through 600,000oz of silver. From $25M worth to nearly none. That was before the complaints started coming in.

That raises the question: what caused the $25M of silver to disappear, and where did that money go? Was it just Hannes selling off the inventory and keeping the profits to retire off of? Did The Tulving Company owe money? Was there a giant heist? A silver shortage? Or was it as boring as Hannes pricing his products too low?

Where Did the Silver Go?

The Tulving Company did claim $675M of sales in 2011, which makes a $25M loss seem reasonable at first glance. But bullion businesses work on spreads: you buy 500 silver coins for $11,000 and sell them for $11,400. After accounting for the cost of the bullion, in 2011 The Tulving Company likely had about $10M-$14M to work with (“gross profit” for the accounting crowd), most of which goes to expenses. Shipping silver is very expensive, and would eat up much of the spread. So after expenses, The Tulving Company might be lucky to have a net profit of $1M-$3M or so. The $25M of silver that disappeared is massive compared to the possible profit.

We know that the $25M of silver that disappeared was not due to a sudden large purchase, such as paying cash for a mansion or yacht, as the silver supply dwindled over the course of many months. A shortage of silver in the market could account for the loss – but then there would have been $25M sitting in the bank, which would have eased any problems before the bankruptcy. Nor could it have been a massive heist one day, as the silver disappeared over time (and moving 600,000oz of silver – weighing as much as about 15 cars – would not be a simple task).

What we also know is that from early 2009 through the bankruptcy, the sharpest drops in the price of gold were in September 2011, December 2011, May 2012 and April 2013. The first two drops were in the 7-month period where $25M of silver disappeared. Online complaints of delays started around June, 2012 – after Tulving’s inventory seems to be gone, and right after the May 2012 drop. And Tulving’s ability to fulfill orders went haywire in April, 2013.

So we are seeing a pattern where big drops in the price of gold correspond with Tulving’s inventory decreasing or delays in customer orders. To me, this suggests that Tulving owed a lot of money over the course of several years, and that what the amount he owed may well have followed the price of gold.

Further, it is reported that many bullion dealers (especially larger ones) hedge in the futures market. Hedging is good, as it insures that dealers will not lose money on large orders if the spot price changes. Speculation, however, is bad – the dealer profits or loses money based on how the price of gold moves, akin to gambling. We also know that The Tulving Company had an account with at least one futures broker (Peregrine Financial, which went bankrupt in 2012).

From the information we have, it looks like the most likely possibility is that The Tulving Company was speculating on the futures market. This certainly is not definite, just a plausible explanation given the facts.

This theory hinges on the correlation between the drops in the price of gold and the loss of inventory and delays in customer orders. It also does not take into account the possibility that with large price drops, Tulving may have received more customer orders, that somehow exacerbated problems.

There is one last theory that many people come up with: that Hannes did this to fund his retirement. I find this one of the least likely scenarios (and hope Hannes is not chuckling as he reads it!). He seems to honestly care about his customers (despite his grumpy persona), and seems to have been genuinely concerned about the problems. This would also be a rather poor way of taking the money and running, there are ways that he could have done so much more effectively.

What Happens Now?

At this point, The Tulving Company has ceased operations and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy (which would allow it to resume operations). A class action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of those who ordered from The Tulving Company without receiving their metal. The Secret Service seized Tulving’s records after the U.S. Attorney launched a criminal investigation.

Although Tulving claims less than $50,000 of assets, I imagine the bankruptcy court will not allow them to discharge their debt without an explanation of where somewhere in the order of $40M+ went, along with proof. The Chapter 11 trustee has a background in forensic accounting, so I doubt Hannes could pull one over on him.

In any case, there is a good chance that over the next few months, we will find out exactly what happened.

With any luck, the metal or money went somewhere where it can be recovered, and customers can be paid what they are owed.

How Do I Avoid This Happening To Me?

If you order bullion online (or anything of high value), you should be wondering how you can avoid the same fate.

There were a lot of warning signs, but most weren’t readily noticed until after it was too late.

Any time ordering something of high value online, you should check reviews of the company, even if you trust the company. Check with the BBB and other sites that track issues with bullion dealers. Most companies get at least occasional complaints, but a pattern of lots of recent complaints (versus fewer in the past) is worth investigating. And a pattern of complaints regarding delays more than 30 days (or the time the company promises to ship in) should make you think twice.

Remember that complaints to the BBB are usually verified, whereas complaints in forums and such may not be. But that does not mean that you should ignore complaints in forums, as they may be the first signs of trouble.

One of my next projects is putting together details on warning signs to look for, and a system that could help discover increasing delays at bullion dealers. If such as system became widely used, it could significantly limit the damage a bullion dealer could cause in a case like this.

 

CoinWeek
CoinWeekhttps://coinweek.com
Coinweek is the top independent online media source for rare coin and currency news, with analysis and information contributed by leading experts across the numismatic spectrum.

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37 COMMENTS

  1. Thank you for your informative article. Sorry for any one that is on the other end of the transaction. Sometime being and staying simple in the way of life helps.

  2. This makes perfect sense. I did business for years with Tulving with no issues. I even traded 1000 ounces of silver for 25 ounces of gold and they paid for shipping both ways and the entire transaction took like 4 days. However at the end of May 2012 I bought 1000 ounces of Canadian Wildlife Series silver and it took 7 weeks for them to deliver. When I called I got the same “insurance” restrictions and they only shipped on Fridays. I could not understand if something was supposedly in stock why it would take 7 weeks to send me what I had paid for. That is all it took, I never purchased from Tulving again.

  3. (I am your AHA moment) My stroke of luck in getting paid was a local detective in my town in Colorado. She called Hannes personally back in October and told him that she would issue a felony warrant on Tuesday, just a few days away, if he did not pay me in full. He knew she was serious and had the power to do it. Most local police departments would never take on a case out of state, or jump on it fast enough to get results. Had this waited another month, or even another week, this would not have been successful. On the forums some people were upset with me because I managed to get paid, when they had been waiting even longer than I had waited.

    • Good going, that tactic reminds me of one I used for North West Territorial Mint, either send the product now or a clint eastwood clone will show up in person to collect.

    • I was lucky and received my Maple Leaf Monster box just before the bankruptcy. I called them about 3 times. it took a total of 7 weeks to get my order.
      I decided not to open the box or even the shipping box! Now it might have historical value as one of the last shipments from Tulving, if my grandchildren are smart enough to investigate why this box is still sealed 22 years from now in 2041.

  4. So in your opinion do you think this has to do with Tulving alone or could this be much bigger with other bullion dealers?

    • Any dealer who says there will be any delay obviously doesn’t have the metal in stock. Some are just brokers without confirmations. The question is will they return cash promptly when asked. I think Tulving has backlogged orders from day one and is sitting on a pile of metal somewhere or more likely is a paid mafia operator. Don’t expect any recoveries.

    • I ordered from Hannes as late as 2013, it took two months to get my box of eagles so we stopped. Just common sense, no research, something wasn’t right.

      I now use JM bullion and I’m quite please. All orders well packed with reasonable prices. I will start checking BBB sites though for any more complaints.

      I have NEVER opened the last two boxes bought from Hannes (Tulving), I now will to make sure it’s silver. Has anyone heard of Tulving shipping out fake medals?

      This is a good article and describes Hannes to a tee. All business, and cares about his orders. My wife says drugs, or gambling brought him down. I don’t know but I can’t wait to end the REST of the story.

  5. I mailes a check on 1/07/14 for a monster box (500) silver eagles and just recently learned my fate. Is there any recourse?? Thanks Ray 717 360-0796

  6. Yep I lost about 100k myself. Bought 70 ounces of gold eagles and never saw them. Wired the money. There goes my nest egg. Off to work I go, only in America. He probably wont even be arrested. Sad. It’s a scam. Probably built up big to run and fail on purpose.

  7. Sad to hear. I have bought and sold to Hannes since 2008 and never had an issue. Haven’t dealth with him for several years so it is a bit of a shock that his business fell apart. My guess is that he got behind and tried to keep things going until he recovered. Now I have to find a new source for PM’s, not happy about it. I really liked Tulving, could call any time and place an order, fair pricing, and fast shipping. Such a shame.

  8. I think the reason Tulving went belly up was the price of silver went down significantly. If he was holding inventory, the value of the inventory would drop as the price of silver and gold dropped, and he would have lost a huge amount of money. The margins on metals are small, and it would not have taken much of a drop in price to get the company into a crisis.

  9. I came here because I’m interested in buying gold and read the Forbes article by Nathan Lewis, which led me to research Tulving and that’s how I found your Coin Week…

    That said: How on earth do people buy Gold/Silver and rely on non-physical transactions and also trust these valuables in the hands of shippers? Forget insurance–that’s a given. I’m talking common sense. I don’t even like a 50″ flat screen TV shipped to me–let alone 10k-100k worth of precious metal shipped to me!

    Why were people not walking in to a brick & mortar with cash and leaving with gold?

    Am I missing something here?

    • TS,

      Everybody has their own tolerance for risk. That being said, there is no permanence in life. Look at what happened to Lehman Brothers. I bet if you went back to the early 19th century, few would have predicted that Andrew Jackson would strangle the First Bank of the United States. Those who physically take possession of metals may not have to worry about their supplier going bust and taking their investment with them- but security of large stores of gold and silver poses its own set of problems- that many would prefer not deal with on their own.

      Thanks for reading CoinWeek!

  10. This is a very unfortunately a bad outcome for all parties involved. I have done business with Tulving in the past and believed that they were honest business valuable meter dealers. Imo I think 5hey might have have had the inventory to back up their sales but as the price of silver and gold dropped they lost money over fist. Maybe they were waiting for a rebound if so I wonder were they got their information. I bet etf’s lost little if anything someone might want to see when etf management dumped their stocks.I might be wrong but people like the Rothschild’s set the price of gold and silver and are heavily involved in stocks.

  11. I bought from Hannes in March 2013…right as the delays started. I got the “we only ship Fridays” and “insurance limits shipped quantities” BS, but eventually got my coins.

  12. Plenty of reputable gold/silver dealers on the Web and Ebay. Most have physical locations. Check online testimonials. Orders should ALWAYS go out within a day or so. The entire ‘hedging’ excuse is just that. Only time hedging makes sense is if a client feared non-paid orders would cancel if the market fell (as with clients not paying for stocks after the October 1987 Crash). If payment is received 1st, then with no refunds, should be no need to hedge.

    Only if a company recieved a mega-order would they feel the need to hedge.

  13. This is the second time Tulving has done this. He went bankrupt the same way once before..A total scam. He has all the funds and is simply a thief….

  14. My father passed in mid 2012. Sometime after his death we were going through his financial records including his checkbook. We saw where he had sent a very significant amount of money to Tulving followed by a much smaller wire. We had to look up Tulving to see what it was. The check was written days before he started staying with us, was hospitalized, etc. and we had his mail diverted to our house and were checking his mail approximately bi-weekly. We knew he had not received anything. I contacted Tulving and got a girl. I asked her if there was a shipment pending and explained the situation to her, that my dad had passed. She said they were waiting on the products and they had been out for sometime (it had been months by now). She diverted shipment to my house and told me it would be on the way that week or so. It took a few more calls from me but a few weeks later I received a shipment from them. This is probably at the end of 2012 / beginning of 2013 by now. We were and are relieved that we were able to make this happen but at the time were shocked that they required NOTHING to divert this shipment to me. No proof of death, etc. Anybody could have called and done it. We also have no idea if what we got is what he actually ordered but it seemed to make sense with the amount. My worry since then, and having seen so many of these articles and stories, is whether the items are real or not. I have seen a number of people above ask but have seen no answers – did they send out any fakes at the end?

    • Chuck: We have never heard of anyone who has ever received fake gold or silver from Tulving and I highly doubt we ever will. Our understanding of the situation is that the start of the problem, and the ultimate demise of the company, was the result of either poor or non existant hedging practices. With the extremely low margins and high price volitility in the prescious metals market at the time, ANYONE who was not hedged properly and who was dealing with millions of dollars in product could sustain large losses in a relatively short period of time. Then it becomes a “steal from Peter to Pay Paul” situation that is almost impossible to recover from, especially if the hedging loses continue to mount. It is like selling below cost and trying to make it up in volume. Sooner or latter you will go broke. The sad thing is that so many people got burned.

      Your point about the requiring NO proof or anything to divert the shipment to a different address than the one ordered from is indeed a cautionary tale and one that is disturbing to say the least. There have been other reports of rather lax security surrounding shipping and transport of product by Tulving’s employees, and we can offer no explaination for it.

      Sorry about your Dad. We are happy that it seems you were able to take delivery of the product he ordered. Many others were not as fortunate.

      • Thank you for the reply. I have been wondering for a bit and this makes me feel much more comfortable. Like I said before, I did not have to send them proof of death to get the shipment diverted. I’d note further though for your readers that I literally did not prove anything. One phone call and a story is all. I did not show that I was his son, his heir, that he was dead, who I was at all, NOTHING. I called, told them I was his son, that he had passed, and asked that the mystery order be shipped to my house. Note that I also live in a different city than he did where the order was initially to be shipped. Although I am very thankful for how easy it was as I was telling the truth, it is nonetheless scary how easy it was since they had no way of knowing whether I was truthful or not. We also feel fortunate that we were able to take shipment in light of all the people who were unable to recover.

        Thank you for the sentiments regarding my father. He is sorely missed.

  15. I got took by Tulving in 1988 I had bought coins that were priced based on some phony price digest of his own making. It was only $3k and I still have the coins, which are worth today about $300. Pfft!

  16. Came across this article researching amagimetals. I placed an order for platinum Eagles back in February 2015 and still have not received the full order. Phones are going unanswered and emails are taking days/weeks to respond. The signs are similar to Tulving. Any news on amagimetals?

  17. Those with long memories wll recall some high profile failures during the great commodities runups in the 1970s. It should be pointed out there needn’t even be any warning signs to be suspicious. Even a well run company can fall prey to an unscrupulous type who suddenly decides Costa Rica looks very inviting and absconds with the profits. I don’t know what the answer is, but caveat emptor.

    In this instance it was always my understanding that a metals dealer doesn’t care what the price is. He doesn’t care if it drops by 40 per cent because the dealers make money on the spread. I can see where some dealers might try to stretch things out a bit, particularly in a rising market but they should always be fully hedged or neutral, at least with their business.

  18. I was tasked by a business associate of my father to find a good deal on gold back in 2005. I found Tulving and we did a test order of about $10,000. That went fantastic and we proceeded to purchase several hundred thousands worth over the next month. He was just trying to “store” his asset at the time, he wasn’t “investing” per se. He was just lucky that he was buying at an avg. price of $430/oz. Tulving had the best price and shipped _immediately_. Hannes was gruff and abrupt on the phone, but, as the author said, seemed to genuinely care about the customer and his business. We sold everything back to him the following year or two from about $600 up to $800/oz. and again, Tulving had the best buy price and paid immediately. It’s a shame for all concerned that the industry lost what was a great business and that it turned out so poorly for so many.

  19. I am a mechanic, work very hard since 1970 and managed to save $40,000.00. I had disputes with banks about the interest charges and fees and decided to keep my savings in gold. Tulving stole $40,000.00 from
    me. So, he spends 30 months in jail with free meals and housing and then walks free? I paid monthly rent, electric bills, food bills, car and gas bills and Tulving walks free? That S.O.B. ruined my life.

  20. I never opened my last box I bought in 2013 from Tulving. Silver has a different kind of sound and it sounds like silver. I know most people probably wouldn’t wait but to this date 2020, the box remains unopened. 500 ounces of what? lol, The sound is silver, I just believe it it.

    I bought probably 1/4 of million dollars in silver from Hannes. I always figured his rude attitude was business. Wow, I think 48 dollars an ounce got him. Not greed but if you buy a 48 and the bottom falls out, well you’re going to lose and they where dealing in millions.

  21. I had 70,000 in rare coins, unslabbed, that became worth around 2500 in the mid eighties. He traded them all for PCGS ceritfied but they all our poor specimens. Should have kept what I had. I was livid and had no recourse. Once a scammer, always a scammer.

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