Birch Gold Group Review: Best for Gold IRAs?11 min read

Disclaimer: We’re reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

In business since 2003, Birch Gold Group is undoubtedly one of the behemoths of the precious metals IRA industry.

They’re certainly a top choice for anyone wanting to open a top-of-the-line precious metals IRA, but what about Birch Gold complaints?

In this Birch Gold Group review, we’ll take a look behind the curtain and reveal everything you need to know about Birch Gold – a top name in the sector for more than 20 years.

About Birch Gold Group

Birch Gold Group doesn’t have a transparent company profile, but with the kind of reputation and experience they bring to the table, it’s not really an issue.

Having been in business since 2003, I believe Birch Gold might be the oldest precious metals IRA company and bullion dealer of any kind of reputation. You’ll find the odd company saying they opened up shop in the 1980s and whatever, but that’s not really as verifiable and as on-record.

Over 20 years in the business? There must have been plenty of changes to the company, right? Not really. Birch Gold has stayed true to its bottom line even as it obviously expanded, a point which I’ll get to in a second.

On their about page, they outline some of their core principles, including things like customer empowerment, education, and transparency.

Though it’s not advertised on their precious metals site, Birch Gold also has a sister company that offers cryptocurrency IRAs and is a likely candidate for the most reputable company of this kind.

It’s a chip off the old block: customer care, due diligence and transparency even in the unmistakably wild world of cryptocurrencies. Though that company is comparatively younger, having opened in 2017, it’s still one of the oldest in that particular sector.

Visit Birch Gold online to request more information.

Birch Gold Group endorsements

The amount of celebrity endorsements that Birch Gold has is almost menacing. It’s without a doubt the largest and most intricate roster of celebrity endorsers out of any company. There’s too many to include, which already tells you there’s quite a few, but some I’d like to mention are:

·The degree to which these endorsers mention or support Birch Gold vary.

We’d say that Ben Shapiro is one of the main celebrities here, as Birch Gold has made recurring appearances on his show to discuss the current, less-than-ideal state of financial affairs.

There are interviews and the like on YouTube channels with others as well, showing that it’s not just a case of a celebrity putting their name to a company.

Whether you like these endorsers or not is up to your views, but given the sheer number, I’d say that there’s probably one endorsement that will make you more inclined to do business with Birch Gold.

Birch Gold Group products

Birch Gold Group is a specialized physical precious metals IRA dealer in the sense that retirement investment is their primary focus. I’ll cover their IRAs a little more in a separate section while listing individual products here.

You might have noticed that an IRA-oriented precious metals dealer is likely to have a limited offering. Not the case with Birch Gold. Their inventory is more akin to that of a regular dealer than someone who specializes in IRAs, showing that a lot of their sales volume comes outside of IRAs.

In line with any other top precious metals broker you’re likely to encounter, Birch Gold doesn’t list prices and also lets us know that not everything is available in the inventory all the time. Pretty standard. Here’s what can be found on their website, grouped according to the precious metal.

Gold

·        American Gold Eagle, bullion and proof, different denominations

·        Canadian Gold Maple Leaf, different denominations

·        Various Canadian wildlife-themed gold coins

·        Canadian Gold Twin Maples

·        South African Krugerrand

·        Gold bars and rounds, no weights or companies specified

·        Goldbacks – a kind of innovation in the gold market that’s essentially a piece of paper currency with a certain amount of gold inside it

·        Various 19th and 20th century American collectible gold coins

Silver

·        American Silver Eagle, bullion and proof, 1oz

·        Canadian Silver Maple Leaf, 1oz

·        America the Beautiful, 5oz

·        Canadian Silver Twin Maple, 2oz

·        Various Canadian wildlife-themed silver coins, different denominations

·        Different kinds of “junk silver” coins

·        Silver bars and rounds, no weights or companies specified

Platinum

·        American Platinum Eagle, 1oz

·        Platinum rounds and bars, no weights or companies specified – it’s worth noting that you don’t often see an offering of platinum rounds even among regular bullion dealers

Palladium

·        Canadian Palladium Maple Leaf, 1oz

·        Platinum rounds and bars, no weights or companies specified – the same as in the case of platinum regarding rounds

Related: How to Diversify Your Savings with Physical Gold and Silver

Opening a precious metals IRA with Birch Gold Group

As mentioned, precious metals IRAs are obviously what Birch Gold places the focus on despite a fairly impressive inventory of physical gold and other precious metals available for regular purchase.

Right off the bat, Birch Gold Group offers clarity by stating that all four precious metals can be bought for placement in their IRA. While most companies of this kind offer the same, a lot of them will mention only gold and silver and make it seem as if platinum group metals either aren’t sold by them or can’t make it into an IRA.

Birch Gold outlines a 5-step process for opening your new precious metals IRA. These are:

1.      Starting your account: pick one or more funding sources in the form of various existing active or inactive employer-sponsored plans and IRAs and have a representative assigned to you

2.      Choosing your precious metals: picking what you like from Birch Gold’s inventory, so long as it’s IRA-eligible. Every bullion product that can make it into an IRA is labeled as such on its page

3.      Confirm your order through a phone call, reviewing everything

4.      Have the metals shipped to a secure depository – more on that in a bit

5.      Manage the precious metals IRA with the help of the representative that was assigned to you

While this process could be streamlined to 3 steps, I like that they’ve taken the extra time to, well, let you know they take extra time. Knowing you’ll have customer care along with the option to make any applicable desired changes to the IRA is great.

It’s pretty clear that Birch Gold Group doesn’t want to place a burden on retirement-oriented precious metals investing. A hands-off approach is preferred by many, and while you can use the website to get practically any piece of info about precious metals IRAs, you can just as easily minimize the effort on your part and simply talk to a representative.

Birch Gold says that opening an account through them can be done in as little as one day while leaving the window open in the case of more complex paperwork for up to a month of waiting. They mention 2 weeks as a kind of average timespan needed to open these accounts to avoid any oversights.

Custody

Birch Gold mentions Equity Trust Company and STRATA Trust Company as their preferred custodians. It’s common for precious metals IRA companies to leave the option of working with another custodian of your choice, and I don’t doubt it’s the same here.

In case you aren’t familiar with the process of opening and handling an IRA, I’d recommend that you spend some time reviewing my gold IRA rollover guide . In short, a precious metals custodian manages your account and takes care of most of the paperwork, along with things such as filing annual reports. They’re the entity that ensures you avoid any penalties or fees due to mismanagement of your IRA.

Storage

The more storage options, the better, and Birch Gold hardly disappoints in this regard. They list four different depositories, the most I’ve seen from any precious metals broker: the Delaware Depository, Brink’s, the Texas Depository and IDS. Though you might be able to have your metals stored in another facility that isn’t listed, these probably cover all of the choices that come to mind.

In turn, these facilities have storage locations all across the country. Los Angeles, New York City, Salt Lake City or Ohio: take your pick. There are other states and locations listed, catering to individual preference and the desire by many to have precious metal investments closer to home.

To this end, Birch Gold Group actually has a separate section on their website where they inform you that visiting the facility of your choice is very much doable, although Brink’s is curiously excluded. They not only outline what’s necessary for the visit and what you should and shouldn’t do, but even feature a customer review that gives you an in-depth look into how a satisfied customer’s visit went.

While top precious metals IRAs companies do offer these kinds of visits, in what’s becoming a theme in this review, I have yet to see one outline the details surrounding them so meticulously. They even assure you that security is the only reason some facilities don’t allow for these visits, and if this is a deal-breaker for you, you can simply opt for another facility.

Contact Birch Gold directly to learn more.

Birch Gold Group fees and investment minimums

·        $10,000 investment minimum to open a precious metals IRA

·        $50 fee to set up an account

·        $100 annual storage fee, seemingly irrespective of the depository you’ve chosen and the metals they’re in – it’s not uncommon for depositories to sometimes charge extra for storage in case you have precious metals besides gold

·        $80 annual custodial fee

·        $30 wire transfer fee

All of these fees should be waived for the first year for any account with an investment of $50,000 or over.

Birch Gold Group reviews

Birch Gold Group is featured on practically every notable watchdog site and even links to them on their own website. The Better Business Bureau (BBB) gives them a 4.77 out of 5 stars based on 71 customer reviews, with an A+ accreditation that was obtained in 2011.

The Business Consumer Alliance gives them a 5 out of 5 stars based on 7 reviews, along with an AAA rating, the highest possible mark. On ConsumerAffairs, they have a 4.8/5 star rating based on 114 reviews.

The TrustLink profile sports a 5 out of 5 star rating based on 132 reviews, and Trustpilot gives them a 4.9 out of 5 stars based on 126 reviews, or Excellent. 95% of the reviews are 5-star ones, 3% 4-star ones and 2% 1-star ones. I was a little curious to see what the 1-star reviews have to say so I dug a little, but let’s first go over the positive.

A very prominent theme in these reviews is that customers often say that they feel as if Birch Gold is the best company of its kind around. That’s quite the accolade even from a single customer, but certainly something to be paid attention to when said over and over again. And those that say it are both IRA investors and customers who have used Birch Gold for regular bullion purchases. 

The general positive feedback has pretty much everything you’d want to hear when considering a precious metals broker, especially one for an IRA. Great and attentive customer representatives, quick service, great product selection, transparency, treating novices to precious metals investment correctly, a commitment to long-term customer care…

To drive the aforementioned point across, multiple reviewers say they’ve worked with different companies and that doing business with Birch Gold felt like the company is on another level in terms of professionalism. So what about the bad feedback, then?

Birch Gold Group complaints

Should we dig into the little negative feedback that a company that’s been in business for over 20 years has? Might as well, for curiosity’s sake. After some searching, I found one reviewer on Trustpilot who says they had a long talk with a representative and asked for advice on what might be the best investment for their purposes.

The representative says the proofs that were suggested resulted in a 50% loss on investment. Based on their entry point and the movement of gold prices, this seems outright dubious, but it still got Birch Gold a 1-star review.

The only complaint on the BCA website was resolved to the customer’s liking. The few that are on BBB are more of a mixed bag: a supposedly pushy representative, dissatisfaction over markup, the occasional delay…

Birch Gold obviously replies quickly and attentively to each complaint, and almost all of them are resolved to the customer’s liking. The very few ones that aren’t are almost amusing, with Birch Gold insisting that they’re not calling an apparently angry would-be customer, who says:

“Maybe martians are leaving me Birch Gold robocalls!”

The BBB complaint profile is quite the read. There does appear to be some truth to Birch Gold having a high markup sometimes, although these are disclosed before making the confirmation.

In general, the complaint profile is akin to what you might expect if you run a best-of company for over 20 years. Not every customer is going to have patience, and even your best efforts to remedy things, as Birch Gold uniformly does, will still leave a red flag that makes you look like a villain.

Related: Free Guide Reveals “Loophole” to Buy Physical Gold with Your 401(k)

Birch Gold Group pros and cons

Pros

·        A candidate for both the oldest and most reputable company in the precious metals IRA sector

·        Great selection of metals

·        Great reviews

Cons

·        No clear markup on products on the website, which some suggest is high

·        Brink’s doesn’t allow visits

·        Maybe you don’t like celebrity endorsers?

Birch Gold Group review – Verdict

Despite so many years in the business, Birch Gold Group remains as attentive to every single customer as if they were a newcomer to the industry trying to make their name, which is clear even from complaints.

They even reply to lots of positive reviews on various sites and sometimes choose to feature them on their own site, which is a nice touch for a large company. What can you expect when doing business with Birch Gold?

I’d say, more than anything, a precious metals IRA that is made to last. While every gold IRA company says they’re in it for the long run, Birch Gold is one of the few that has been proven to be so. I’d suggest Birch Gold to anyone with a long-term commitment to precious metals investment who’d like an assurance that their account will be managed well years or even decades down the line, along with plenty of customer care in-between. 

As a bonus, judging by the many satisfied non-IRA customers, they also appear to act as a formidable plain old bullion dealer, and will probably be a good choice for anyone wanting to bolster their home collection with some value.

All in all, Birch Gold Group is a company that continues to remain a step ahead even as new and appealing competitors spring up routinely.