Pacific Precious Metals Review

Last updated: July 12, 2026 · By White Metal Resources Editorial

Most reviews of precious metals IRA companies cover a specific breed: a national marketing operation with a call center, a dealer arm, and no store you can walk into. Pacific Precious Metals is a different animal. It runs four physical bullion counters in the Bay Area, sells over the counter and online, and treats IRA setup as one service among several rather than as the entire business.

That structural difference changes the honest test. The question is not whether the sales floor delivers a polished pitch. The question is whether a walk-in dealer with four locations can compete on IRA fees and process with a call-center dealer whose whole revenue depends on IRA rollovers.

We stay balanced on purpose. Pacific has a long public web trail and a verifiable federal-filing footprint, but it also chooses not to publish a fee schedule. Both facts sit next to each other in this review, in equal weight, and the sources sit under every claim.

Who Pacific Precious Metals actually is

Pacific Precious Metals is a Bay Area bullion dealer that runs four retail storefronts and a national e-commerce catalog. Its About Us page states plainly that the firm has four retail locations in the San Francisco Bay Area and a full online storefront that ships nationally (source: pacificpreciousmetals.com/about-us, checked July 2026).

Its legal entity, per the schedule of approved dealer counterparties in A-Mark Precious Metals' 2020 amended Rabobank credit facility, is Pacific Precious Metals LP. The business address recorded in that same SEC-filed schedule is 302 Caledonia St, Ste 3, Flr 2, Sausalito, CA 94965 (source: sec.gov EDGAR, filing 0001591588-20-000021, Exhibit 10.1, checked July 2026). A limited partnership structure is standard for family-owned or partner-owned retail bullion firms.

The customer-facing brand publishes two phone lines. The main number is 415-383-7411 and the secondary line, listed on the IRA page, is 510-270-4330 (source: pacificpreciousmetals.com, checked July 2026). The email of record is info@pacificpreciousmetals.com.

The retail-plus-router business model

Understanding what Pacific Precious Metals is takes one sentence: it is a retail bullion dealer that also brokers self-directed precious metals IRAs through third-party custodians. It is not a custodian, not a depository, and it does not run its own bundled IRA product.

That is the key contrast with national gold IRA marketing companies. The nationals bundle. Pacific unbundles. On a Pacific IRA, three separate legal counterparties end up on your paperwork: Pacific as the dealer, one of three named custodians as the account trustee, and an IRS-approved depository as the vault operator. Each has its own fee sheet.

Pacific's own IRA page describes the routing in its own words. The client opens the account with a custodian and funds it. The client then files buy-direction paperwork naming Pacific Precious Metals as the dealer. Pacific then coordinates with the custodian to sell the metal into the account and ship it to the depository (source: pacificpreciousmetals.com/precious-metals-ira, checked July 2026).

What Pacific Precious Metals sells

Pacific runs a full four-metal product menu. Its main site nav lists Gold, Silver, Platinum and Palladium bullion, in coins, bars and rounds, plus a Cash for Gold intake service and jewelry appraisal (source: pacificpreciousmetals.com main nav, checked July 2026). Cheque-book collectors will find US Gold, Australian Gold, Austrian Gold, British Gold, Canadian Gold, Chinese Gold, Mexican Gold and South African Gold sub-categories in the shop.

The scrap-intake side of the business uses X-ray fluorescence analysis to grade metal (source: pacificpreciousmetals.com/about-us, checked July 2026). That is a laboratory-grade technique, not a hand-scale estimate, and it is the reason a physical storefront has a real edge over an online-only dealer when you are selling old jewelry.

Product-level premiums over spot are not published on the public site. They are also normally not published by any bullion dealer, because they move with wholesale supply. Getting a same-day written quote and comparing it to the live spot chart is the only reliable way to size the markup.

How Pacific Precious Metals handles silver, platinum and palladium IRAs

Most gold IRA dealer reviews barely mention platinum or palladium. That is a real gap for anyone building a white-metals-first retirement account, so it gets its own section here.

Pacific treats silver, platinum and palladium as full first-class product categories rather than a token add-on. Its main nav gives each metal its own top-level shop page: Silver, Platinum & Palladium (grouped), plus dedicated bar and coin sub-categories. Pacific also stocks these metals in physical form at its four Bay Area storefronts, not only in a warehouse feeding an online cart (source: pacificpreciousmetals.com nav, checked July 2026).

For an IRA, that physical stocking matters less than it does for a walk-in buyer. The metal you order into an IRA does not travel through the storefront on its way to your depository. What matters is whether the specific coin or bar you buy clears the IRS fineness rule for its metal, and whether Pacific's IRA custodian and depository will accept it.

Those thresholds under Internal Revenue Code Section 408(m)(3) run higher on platinum and palladium than on gold. In practical terms, that means a bullion coin that clears the gold rule at 99.5% purity would fall short of the platinum and palladium rules, which sit at 99.95%. The specific coin or bar you buy has to match the metal's own IRS floor, not the average.

Pacific does not publish a per-product white-metals SKU list on the public IRA page. Three product-level questions belong on your first call with them, before any paperwork moves.

The three custodian partners, in detail

Pacific Precious Metals partners with three national self-directed IRA custodians. All three are named on its public IRA page with full addresses and toll-free numbers. Naming the routing chain publicly is unusual and worth crediting.

Two data points are worth noting about this list. First, all three custodians are independent of Pacific Precious Metals. Neither Pacific nor its parent has a controlling stake in any of them, based on the public disclosures we could locate.

Second, Pacific's public copy explicitly tells the reader to click through, call each custodian, and decide which one fits. That is more transparency than most retail IRA pitches offer. It is unusually plain-spoken about the fact that the fee schedule that matters most is the custodian's, not the dealer's.

Verifiable track record and BBB

Here is what we could confirm live and how, plus what we could not.

Regulatory record: SEC, FINRA, CFTC

We ran three public regulator searches. Full URLs are in the Sources section.

The Securities and Exchange Commission EDGAR full-text search returns 12 results for the exact phrase Pacific Precious Metals, all of them A-Mark Precious Metals Inc. filings between 2019 and early 2026 (source: efts.sec.gov, checked July 2026). Every hit places Pacific Precious Metals LP on the approved-counterparty schedule of A-Mark's Rabobank credit facility, at a $250,000 sublimit. There is no SEC enforcement filing, no cease-and-desist, no complaint, and no litigation release naming the company.

The FINRA rules and guidance URL for the exact phrase returns HTTP 404 (source: finra.org, checked July 2026). A BrokerCheck entry is not expected for a private bullion dealer that is not a registered broker-dealer or investment adviser.

The CFTC Sanctions Information Retrieval Tool endpoint timed out during our checks and did not return a live result. Absence of a finding in a limited search is not the same as a clean record. If regulatory history is a decision factor for you, run the dealer name through the CFTC Reparations Sanctions list, NASAA, your state securities regulator, and the FTC public actions database before you sign.

Fees, minimum and the disclosure gap

Pacific Precious Metals does not publish a fee schedule on its public IRA page. There is no line listing setup fees, annual custodian fees, storage fees, buyback pricing or the dealer spread over spot. The account minimum is also absent.

The one dollar figure the IRA page does quote is for the checkbook-control alternative path, where Pacific points customers to a Southern California firm called My Solo 401k Financial to set up a self-directed LLC or trust. Pacific's own copy says those setup fees range from about $800 to $1,100 (source: pacificpreciousmetals.com/precious-metals-ira, checked July 2026). That is My Solo 401k Financial's fee, not Pacific's. Pacific merely references it.

The custodian's fee sheet, not the dealer's, is where most of the ongoing annual cost lives. Each of the three custodian partners publishes its own account-opening fee, annual administration fee and annual storage fee on its own site. Pull those directly. Pacific's role in the fee stack is the dealer premium over spot on purchase and the buyback spread on exit. Both are set inside a written quote, not on the site.

Because Pacific does not publish these numbers, we cannot show a Pacific-specific fee table, and we will not invent one. Instead, use the calculator below with the actual quote you get to see the drag over a decade on your own account size.

The case for Pacific Precious Metals

Who Pacific Precious Metals suits, and who it does not

A precious metals dealer is not one-size-fits-all, and honesty on fit tends to save both sides time.

Pacific Precious Metals could suit a saver who prefers a regional retail dealer with a physical storefront over a national call-center operation. It fits someone who wants the routing chain named publicly and is willing to call three custodians before signing. It could also suit a buyer who wants platinum or palladium inside an IRA and finds the gold-only shops thin on white-metals product.

Pacific Precious Metals is likely not a fit for a saver who wants a single 800-number to manage the whole rollover for them. It is also not a fit if you want to compare fees on the public site before making a call, or if you want a bundled dealer plus custodian plus depository product where one invoice covers everything. The unbundled router model has real virtues, but it puts more work on the client.

How to evaluate Pacific Precious Metals yourself

Use this six-step check on Pacific Precious Metals. The same six steps work on any dealer on the market.

1. Pull the BBB profile directly at bbb.org for Pacific Precious Metals in Sausalito, California. Note the letter grade, the accreditation status, and the count of closed complaints in the last three years.
2. Pick the two custodian names from Pacific's public list that fit your account type, and pull each custodian's own fee sheet directly from its own site before you sign anything.
3. Ask Pacific for a written quote covering the dealer premium over spot on your target metal mix and the buyback spread. Same call, same email thread.
4. Confirm the IRS-approved depository the chosen custodian will send your metal to, and whether storage is segregated or commingled. Get it in writing.
5. Cross-check the day-of purchase premium against a live spot chart from a public source and note the gap in basis points.
6. Search the CFTC Reparations Sanctions list, NASAA, your state securities regulator, and the FTC public actions database for both Pacific Precious Metals LP and each of the three custodian names. Do this before any funds move.

What the un-quoted fees can cost over time

When Pacific Precious Metals, or any dealer, is the wrong move

A gold or white-metals IRA is not the right move for every saver, and this section stays outside of any sales pitch on purpose.

Skip the dealer entirely if any of the following is true.

• You have less than three to five years to retirement and need the money as liquid cash for known expenses.
• Your total retirement savings sit below the point where a fixed $200 or $300 annual custodian and storage stack turns into a punishing percentage of the account.
• You do not want to hold a physical asset that is not easily sold on a bad-news day.
• You are relying on the account to generate income before age 59.5. Early distributions carry federal and state penalty layers that a metals IRA does not solve.

If any of those apply, the honest recommendation is not Pacific Precious Metals or any other dealer. It is a call with a licensed advisor to build a plan that fits your timeline first.

Pacific Precious Metals questions, answered

Sources