Preserve Gold Fees Explained

Affiliate disclosure: we may earn a commission when a reader opens an account through links on this page. The commission has no effect on what you pay or on what we publish. We are not a financial or tax advisor; consult a licensed advisor for your situation. Last reviewed August 2026.

This page walks through what a first-time visitor can see on the Preserve Gold site about fees, what the site leaves blank, and what a Texas retirement saver should insist on in writing before authorizing a single wire. Every claim ties to a specific captured page dated November 2025, February 2026, April 2026, or July 2026, or to the live Preserve Gold homepage on August 6, 2026, and the sources block at the bottom lists each one.

Harry's Coins has no affiliate relationship with Preserve Gold. Nothing on this page routes to the Preserve Gold site, and no link on this page pays us to send you toward Preserve Gold. We publish this fee explainer as an editorial reference for retirement savers weighing Preserve Gold against neutral criteria.

What Preserve Gold publishes about fees

The captured Preserve Gold IRA product page at the URL path /gold-ira/ describes two fee-adjacent commitments in plain language, and both are qualitative rather than dollar-denominated. The wording sits on the page across Wayback Machine captures dated November 2025, February 2026, April 2026, and July 2026, and matches the live homepage on August 6, 2026.

The first commitment is a multi-year fee waiver. The site states that Preserve Gold waives IRA storage and custodian fees "up to 5 years depending on your starting investment size." That sentence is the entire published description. Neither the waiver tier table nor the fees that apply once a waiver expires appear on any captured page.

The second commitment is a zero-fee buyback for metals originally purchased through Preserve Gold. The site describes the buyback as a policy that lets a customer sell metal back at the prevailing bid without a company-side transaction charge. The dealer spread that applies at that resale is not published.

Two smaller items sit alongside those two commitments. The site advertises complimentary insured shipping on qualifying orders and a 24-hour cancellation window on completed purchases. A current homepage promotion also lists a 200 dollar immediate account credit and a free premium home safe on qualifying orders (source: preservegold.com homepage, live fetch dated August 6, 2026).

Nothing else on any captured page speaks directly to a Preserve Gold fee figure a comparison shopper could plug into a fee-drag model. No dealer rate card, no coin catalog with premiums, and no trustee fee schedule links out from any captured page.

What Preserve Gold does not publish

The captured Preserve Gold pages do not print a specific dollar figure for any of the six fee lines a retirement saver needs to compare across dealers. Each line is listed below with a short note on where a reader has to go to obtain the number.

The first is the account minimum. No captured page states a dollar threshold to open a Preserve Gold precious metals IRA. Comparable dealers publish a range from 5,000 to 50,000 dollars, per our gold IRA fees explained anchor page. A Preserve Gold minimum is not publicly disclosed.

The second is the one-time setup fee. No captured page prints a Preserve Gold setup fee in dollars. The industry range for setup on a self-directed precious metals IRA is 50 to 300 dollars per our fees anchor page. A Preserve Gold-specific figure is not on the public site.

The third is the annual custodian fee after the waiver period ends. The multi-year waiver is described on the captured pages, but the post-waiver annual custodian fee in dollars is not stated. A reader who plans to hold the account past year five cannot price years six and later from the public site.

The fourth is the annual storage fee after the waiver period ends. The same gap applies. Depository storage fees vary by facility and by segregated versus commingled treatment. No post-waiver rate is published for any of the three named depositories on any captured page.

The fifth is the waiver tier thresholds themselves. The captured page says the waiver runs "up to 5 years depending on your starting investment size," and does not publish which purchase amount unlocks a one-year waiver, a three-year waiver, or the full five-year waiver.

The sixth is the coin-by-coin dealer premium over spot on standard IRA-eligible bullion. No coin-level price list appears on any current or archived Preserve Gold page. The buy-side spread on a real order is quoted verbally on the phone.

Who charges what: the dealer, the custodian, the depository

A self-directed precious metals IRA involves three distinct parties, each with a separate fee schedule. Under Internal Revenue Code 408(a)(2), the account must be administered by a bank, an insured credit union, an IRS-approved non-bank trustee, or a savings and loan (source: irs.gov Publication 590-A, checked August 2026).

Preserve Gold is the dealer. The company is based at 21700 Oxnard Street, Suite 430, Woodland Hills, CA 91367, and its published customer service line is (877) 444-0923 (source: preservegold.com contact page via the Wayback Machine, captured July 2026). The line a dealer controls is the buy-side spread on the coins and bars quoted to a customer.

The self-directed IRA custodian is a separate entity. It opens the tax-advantaged account, holds legal title, files the annual reports with the IRS, and charges a setup fee, an annual maintenance fee, and per-transaction fees. Preserve Gold does not name the specific trustee on any captured page. The site refers to "vetted custodians" without a specific corporate name.

The depository is a third party. It receives the physical metal from the dealer, stores it in an insured vault, and charges an annual storage fee that varies with segregated versus commingled treatment. Preserve Gold names three depositories on the captured product page: Texas Precious Metals Depository in Shiner, Delaware Depository, and International Depository Services in Dallas.

Naming the depository panel on the public site is a transparency win. It lets a reader look up each vault operator directly and check its own audit history, insurance, and state licensure before signing. The absence of a specific trustee name is the offsetting gap on the custodian side.

The multi-year waiver, how to read a tiered offer

A fee waiver is a promotional pricing structure. The dealer covers a fee that would otherwise be invoiced by the trustee or the depository, usually as part of an incentive to attract a larger opening deposit. The economics for the customer depend on two things: how long the waiver runs, and what the fees revert to after the waiver ends.

Preserve Gold publishes the waiver length as "up to 5 years." The maximum applies to the largest starting purchases only, and the actual waiver length for a specific customer depends on where their purchase lands inside the unpublished tier table. A reader with a 25,000 dollar starting purchase may earn a shorter waiver than a reader with a 100,000 dollar starting purchase.

The post-waiver fees matter more than the waiver length for a long-term holder. If a reader plans to keep a precious metals IRA for 15 or 20 years, the fees paid in years six through twenty determine most of the multi-decade cost. Those figures are not on any Preserve Gold captured page.

The correct move on the first call is to request the tier table as an attachment on Preserve Gold letterhead, plus the post-waiver custodian and storage fees for the depository the reader plans to use. A verbal quote loses value when the account moves to a different specialist a year later.

Dealer spread, the fee no dealer prints

The dealer spread is the largest fee line for most first-year buyers, and it is not published on any Preserve Gold page we captured on August 2026. That absence is consistent with the rest of the precious metals sector, where dealer spreads are almost never posted publicly because they move with the coin selection and the metal price.

A dealer spread of 5 percent on a 75,000 dollar coin purchase equals 3,750 dollars, or roughly 5 percent of the account, on day one. A dealer spread of 10 percent on the same purchase equals 7,500 dollars. The gap between a 5 percent spread and a 10 percent spread on a mid-sized rollover is often larger than five years of custodian plus storage fees combined.

Ask the Preserve Gold specialist to email a coin-by-coin price sheet after any pricing call, listing the mark up over spot on each product. Save that sheet as a PDF alongside the trustee application before authorizing the wire. Verbal price quotes disappear. A dated PDF sits on file and lets you compare the same coins against a second dealer on level ground.

A zero-fee buyback commitment addresses the sell side of the same relationship. Preserve Gold pledges no company-side transaction fee at resale on metals originally sold by the company. The dealer bid at resale still carries a spread against the spot price, so the buyback is not equivalent to a spread-free exit. Ask for the current buyback spread in writing.

Depository geography and storage cost for Texas readers

Preserve Gold names three depository partners on its captured IRA page: Texas Precious Metals Depository in Shiner, Delaware Depository, and International Depository Services in Dallas. Two of the three sit inside Texas state lines. That geography is unusual among the dealers Harry's Coins has reviewed, since most competitor sites default to Delaware or Nevada for storage.

A Texas reader who prefers metal stored inside Texas has two ready choices with Preserve Gold, without needing to negotiate for an in-state facility off menu. Neither of the two Texas facilities is the state-chartered Texas Bullion Depository in Leander. Both are private vaults regulated at the state banking level.

The annual storage cost the depository will invoice after the Preserve Gold waiver expires is not published on any captured page. Industry-typical commingled storage runs 100 to 250 dollars per year, per our gold IRA fees explained anchor page. Segregated storage adds roughly 50 to 150 dollars per year on top of commingled at most private facilities.

A reader who wants the state-run Leander facility instead of one of the three private vaults has to raise the request directly with the Preserve Gold specialist. The self-directed IRA trustee that actually opens the account must then confirm the arrangement in writing. Texas Bullion Depository operations are administered by the Texas Comptroller and do not publish an approved-dealer roster (source: texasbulliondepository.gov, checked August 2026).

The BBB record and the complaint claim

The Better Business Bureau profile for Preserve Gold shows an A+ letter grade, accreditation since September 6, 2022, and a business start date of July 6, 2022. Complaint volume on file is 2 closed in the past 3 years and 0 closed in the past 12 months. Customer reviews on the profile average 4.94 out of 5 across 116 reviews (source: bbb.org Preserve Gold profile via the Wayback Machine, captured July 2026).

The named business management on the profile lists Mr. Daniel Boston as owner and Ms. Jennifer Reubel as CEO. Naming the principals on a third-party record reduces the ambiguity a reader faces when a young dealer keeps its ownership off the public record entirely.

Preserve Gold's own About page describes the company's BBB standing with the phrase "a perfect record with the Better Business Bureau, without a single complaint against our name" (source: preservegold.com about page via the Wayback Machine, captured July 2026). The live BBB profile shows 2 complaints closed in the past 3 years, so the About page copy does not match the primary source record.

Two complaints closed in three years is a light complaint load in absolute terms, particularly for a dealer whose customer review count sits above 100. The point of the citation is not the volume; it is the mismatch between the marketing wording and the underlying record. A careful reader treats the About page copy as dated or overstated, then reads the BBB record directly.

Texas readers and the fee arithmetic

Texas has no state personal income tax. That is anchored in the Texas Constitution and confirmed at the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts (source: comptroller.texas.gov, checked August 2026). A qualified distribution from a Texas resident's precious metals IRA is federally taxed only, with no state layer. The federal rules under IRS Publication 590-B still apply.

The state-run Texas Bullion Depository in Leander is administered by the Texas Comptroller and operated by Lone Star Tangible Assets. Its public pages describe an IRA account process for individual customers, and it does not publish an approved-dealer roster (source: texasbulliondepository.gov, checked August 2026).

Because Texas savers do not pay a state income tax layer at withdrawal, the fee lines inside the account carry proportionally more weight in the multi-year math. Every basis point saved on the dealer spread, the custodian fee, or the storage fee flows through to the retirement balance instead of being partly absorbed by a state deduction that never existed in the first place.

The captured Preserve Gold pages do not name a Texas office or a Texas hire. The company's two Texas storage options are the private facilities in Shiner and in Dallas. A Texas reader who wants any specific in-state paperwork or in-state relationship beyond those two vaults has to raise it in writing.

How to verify Preserve Gold's real fee schedule before you fund

Because the public Preserve Gold site does not print a dealer fee sheet, a custodian rate card, or a depository storage rate, a Texas reader has to force those numbers onto paper before any funds move. Use the sequence below.

1. Request a written fee sheet on Preserve Gold letterhead, listing the account minimum, the setup fee, the waiver tier table that ties starting purchase size to waiver length, and the dealer spread policy. Do not schedule a funding call before this document is in hand.
2. Ask Preserve Gold to name the self-directed IRA custodian by legal entity name in the same email. Confirm the entity name and request a link to its IRS non-bank trustee approval, in line with the categories listed in Internal Revenue Code 408 (source: irs.gov Publication 590-A, checked August 2026).
3. Contact the named custodian directly and request the current trustee fee schedule as a PDF. Setup, annual maintenance, and transaction fees belong on that schedule, and those figures are set by the trustee, not by Preserve Gold.
4. Choose the depository from the three private facilities named on the captured Preserve Gold product page, or ask in writing whether the state-run Texas Bullion Depository in Leander is available. Request the post-waiver annual storage fee in dollars for the balance you expect to hold.
5. Choose direct trustee-to-trustee transfer for a 401(k) or IRA rollover, to avoid triggering the 60-day rule and the 20 percent mandatory withholding that apply to indirect rollovers (source: irs.gov Publication 590-A, checked August 2026).
6. Hold the pricing call after funds land at the trustee. Ask for the dealer spread on each coin quoted, and require a coin-by-coin price sheet by email within one business day. Ask for the current buyback spread in the same email.
7. Save the Preserve Gold fee sheet, the trustee fee schedule, the depository storage confirmation, the coin-by-coin price sheet, and the buyback terms as one bundled PDF. Ask the trustee for a quarterly statement and an annual holdings audit going forward.

Chart: disclosed dollar figures across six fee lines

The chart below stacks the six core fee lines a comparison shopper needs and shows whether Preserve Gold publishes a specific dollar figure on its own pages for each one. Every one of the six lines reads not publicly disclosed. The qualitative commitments described on the captured pages, the multi-year waiver and the zero-fee buyback, sit outside the chart because neither ties to a specific dollar figure.

The fee-drag calculator below lets a reader test a stack of dealer spread, setup, custodian, and storage fees against a chosen balance. Because Preserve Gold does not publish any of the underlying rates, use industry-typical values as your placeholder and update as soon as you have written rates in hand.

Table: the six fee lines side by side

The table below reproduces the six fee lines a retirement saver must compare across dealers, with a status column for what Preserve Gold publishes and a source column pointing back to the captured page.

When a Preserve Gold account is a bad fit

Frequently asked questions

By Harry's Coins Editorial. Last reviewed August 2026.