United Gold Group Review

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

What the California paper trail says about UGG, Inc.

United Gold Group is a small California operator with a paper trail that starts well after the 2008 crisis. The business start date on the BBB profile is January 8, 2019. The Better Business Bureau file opened on November 18, 2020, about twenty-two months later. Accreditation followed on March 19, 2021, another four months on. The corporate legal name is UGG, Inc., a California Corporation with Secretary of State file number C4667635.

Three details in that paper trail matter for a buyer. The firm is roughly six years old on the calendar in mid-2026. The BBB relationship is about five years deep. The Managing Director named on the profile is David Bleeden, listed for both the principal contact and customer contact roles.

Two published U.S. addresses appear on public pages. The BBB record and the coin-detail schema on the home page carry 7083 Hollywood Boulevard, Suite 620, Los Angeles, California 90028-8909. The About-page footer lists 22619 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu, California 90265. Both share the same toll-free numbers, (800) 753-8534 and (866) 930-3832, and the same corporate email at Corporate@UnitedGoldGroup.com.

The public site is built on Wix. That fact is not a red flag by itself, but it is a signal about scale. A Wix marketing site is a small-operator technical choice, not a bespoke retirement-services stack. It also means every visible page is standard Wix output, so the absence of a published fee schedule is a business choice by United Gold Group, not a platform limitation.

How this company handles silver, platinum and palladium IRAs

United Gold Group sells three of the four IRA-eligible metals: gold, silver and platinum. It does not sell palladium. That absence is the sharpest single distinctive in the firm's catalog and is worth reading before anything else on the site.

The site menu names three metals-buying pages: Buy Gold, Buy Silver, Buy Platinum. There is no Buy Palladium page and no Palladium IRA landing page. A crawl of the Buy Platinum page returned zero palladium mentions. A crawl of the home page returned zero palladium mentions. The Meta business description used by the firm on its Wix schema reads "Self Directed IRA for gold and silver and precious metals investments." The three-metal framing is consistent everywhere we looked.

Silver is a first-class product on the site. A dedicated Buy Silver page, a "Silver IRA" reference in marketing copy, and the "Frank Motek Gold Show" content that discusses silver alongside gold all give silver equal top-of-menu placement. What the site does not publish is a specific silver fee schedule or minimum, separate from the general precious-metals framework.

Platinum has its own Buy Platinum page and its own "Invest in Platinum" landing page. The absence of palladium changes what is possible for a buyer who wants exposure across all four metals inside a single IRA. It also simplifies the fee conversation, since sourcing runs across a smaller catalog than a four-metal dealer would carry.

Federal law sets the fineness thresholds at .999 fine for silver and .9995 fine for platinum, so eligibility is a metal-purity question, not a dealer question. The variables that separate one dealer from another are the coin and bar selection actually stocked, the ask premium per ounce, and the buy-side spread at liquidation. Ask the specialist to name specific coins and bars, quote premium per ounce on each, and confirm buy-back pricing in writing.

The BBB record, small sample and all

The Better Business Bureau profile at bbb.org, identifier 1216-1292125 in the Los Angeles & Silicon Valley regional office, is the most detailed independent record we could pull for United Gold Group. The live profile returns a Cloudflare challenge to scripted fetches. The numbers below come from the December 16, 2023 snapshot on web.archive.org, checked July 2026.

The letter grade is A+. That composite grade reflects business type, complaint history, licensing and BBB Standards compliance. Accreditation is a separate status. United Gold Group has been BBB Accredited since March 19, 2021, which means the firm has agreed to the BBB's own standards and pays for accreditation. Accreditation is a paid membership plus a code-of-conduct agreement, not a quality rating in itself.

The complaint volume section shows 2 total closed complaints, both across the last three years, and 1 closed in the past twelve months. The types are 1 Advertising/Sales Issues (initial complaint February 18, 2021) and 1 Problems with Product/Service (most recent, October 21, 2022). Both were listed as Answered by the firm, which is the highest resolution status the BBB assigns to a completed complaint cycle.

The customer review section shows 4 reviews on the profile snapshot. Four reviews is a small statistical sample. It supports zero conclusions about aggregate customer sentiment, and it lets the individual complaint narratives on the profile carry more weight than any average number could.

Both complaint narratives are worth reading in the BBB profile itself. In the 2021 complaint response, the firm stated it sent 17 extra coins to the customer as a remedy. In the 2022 complaint the firm posted an itemized response noting an order dated June 6, 2022 that was received without prior complaints. Neither narrative supports a scam framing on its own. Both illustrate that the firm engages the BBB complaint process rather than ignoring it.

Fees, minimums and everything United Gold Group does not publish

The site publishes no specific setup fee. It publishes no first-year or subsequent-year custodian fee. It publishes no storage fee at any depository. It publishes no annual dollar figure for the account. It publishes no minimum-investment number. It publishes no buy-sell spread on any specific coin. On every fee-adjacent question, the pricing page defers to a phone call.

That opacity is the single most important operational fact about the firm. Every retirement dollar decision runs through the sales call, not the pricing page. A buyer without a written schedule in hand walks into a price discovery process where the dealer, not the client, controls the ordering and framing of each variable.

Before booking any consultation with the firm, ask by email for six specific numbers. Setup fee for the account. First-year custodian fee and subsequent-year custodian fee at the trustee UGG most often routes to. Storage fee at each depository option. Wire and termination fees. Minimum funding threshold. Current buy-sell spread on the exact coin or bar being proposed. If any of those numbers is quoted only verbally, ask for it in writing before signing a transfer authorization.

The site does mention that United Gold Group is not a licensed financial advisor and does not give financial advice. That disclaimer appears in the About page footer. A buyer should read it plainly. It means the retirement decision, the tax question and the fit-for-purpose question all sit on the client and any licensed advisor the client hires separately, not on United Gold Group.

Custodians and depositories: the missing names

United Gold Group does not custody metals and does not hold the IRA balance. The About page states plainly that the company "works with custodial administrators to help our customers set up, transfer and maintain their self-directed tax-deferred accounts." That is the standard dealer-plus-third-party-trustee model used across most of the vertical.

What the site does not do is name the trustee. No specific self-directed IRA custodian is named on any public page we could reach. No specific depository is named for storage. That is a gap. Trustee fees are separate from any dealer promotion, and they apply to the account for its entire life, so a buyer who does not know which trustee will handle the account cannot verify the fee schedule against a published document.

Ask the specialist to name the two or three self-directed IRA custodians the firm most often routes to for accounts of your size. Ask which depository will actually receive your metals. Ask whether storage is segregated or non-segregated. Home storage of IRA metal is not permitted under federal law, so the depository question is not optional.

The About page also states that United Gold Group offers assistance with Required Minimum Distributions and can help set up beneficiary and remainderman designations. Those are useful services if you have a licensed advisor on your side. They do not replace one.

United Gold Group at a glance

What an annual percentage fee costs on your balance

Because United Gold Group publishes no specific setup, custodian, storage or annual dollar figure, any modeling has to start with the number the specialist quotes you in writing. The calculator below is deliberately generic. It shows the cumulative cost of any annual percentage-of-assets fee across three starting balances over a ten-year holding period. Type in your actual quoted numbers and read the drag on your own balance.

Two things weight the output. First, a flat annual dollar fee lands very differently at different balance levels. On a $50,000 balance a flat $200 fee prints as 0.400 percent per year; on the same account at $250,000 the same $200 fee prints as 0.080 percent per year. Higher balances dilute the percentage drag, which is why account size matters as much as fee structure.

Second, the annual fee is only one cost line. The dealer buy-sell spread on the specific coin is a separate cost and is usually the largest single number over a full holding period. It is not modeled in the calculator above. Ask for the current spread on the exact coin the specialist proposes and evaluate the two lines together rather than in isolation.

Opening a precious-metals IRA with United Gold Group in seven steps

The mechanics below reflect the standard dealer-plus-third-party-trustee path described in the About page combined with the general self-directed IRA process. The route assumes an existing tax-advantaged balance moving to a new self-directed IRA that United Gold Group helps facilitate through a third-party custodial administrator.

1. Get the fee schedule in writing before you book a call. Ask by email for setup fee, first-year and subsequent-year custodian fee, storage fee at each depository option, wire and termination fees, minimum funding threshold and current buy-sell spread on a specific coin. If any variable is quoted only verbally, ask for it in writing before signing anything.
2. Name the trustee and the depository. The public site does not name a self-directed IRA custodian or a depository. Ask the specialist for the two or three trustees they most often route to for accounts of your size, then request each trustee's published fee schedule directly from that trustee.
3. Confirm your funding source is eligible. Traditional IRAs, Roth IRAs, SEP and SIMPLE IRAs, former-employer 401(k) balances, 403(b), 457(b) and Thrift Savings Plan balances can typically move to a self-directed IRA. Confirm your specific plan and any employer-plan restrictions before authorizing any transfer.
4. Open the self-directed IRA with the chosen trustee. The trustee holds legal title to the metal and handles annual tax reporting. Its fee schedule is a separate document from anything United Gold Group sends you and applies to your account for its entire life.
5. Fund via a direct trustee-to-trustee transfer. A direct transfer moves the money custodian to custodian and avoids the 60-day deadline and the 20 percent mandatory withholding that apply to indirect rollovers under Internal Revenue Code Section 408.
6. Choose IRS-approved metals only. Gold at .995 fine or better with named exceptions like the American Gold Eagle, silver at .999 fine, platinum at .9995 fine. Palladium is not sold by the firm. Favor common bullion coins and approved refiner bars over premium numismatic coins where the buy-sell spread can widen without a matching floor.
7. Assign metals to a named depository. Ask which depository will receive your metals and whether the storage is segregated or non-segregated. Home storage of IRA metal is not permitted under federal law, and any suggestion otherwise from any dealer is a red flag.

Where the public record supports the firm, and where it does not

Who UGG fits, and who it does not

United Gold Group is a plausible shortlist candidate when three conditions line up. The buyer is comfortable running fee discovery through the phone call and can extract a full written schedule before signing. The intended metal exposure is gold, silver or platinum, with no palladium allocation planned inside the same IRA. The buyer values the direct-line access to a small operator with a named Managing Director more than the operational depth of a larger firm.

The firm is a weaker fit if published fee transparency sits at the top of the criteria list. A minority of dealers in the vertical publish a specific flat annual dollar figure on their own pricing page. United Gold Group is not one of them. It is also a weaker fit if the preference is for a firm with a paper trail predating the 2008 financial crisis, since UGG's corporate paper trail begins in January 2019.

A buyer who intends to allocate any share of the account to palladium should specifically look elsewhere for that portion of the account. Palladium is fully IRA-eligible under federal law at .9995 fineness. United Gold Group is simply not the dealer that will source it for you.

When a precious-metals IRA is the wrong wrapper entirely

Independent of any specific dealer, a precious-metals IRA is not the right instrument for every household. If liquidity is likely to be needed within the next few years, physical metal is a slow asset to convert. Dealer buy-back settles at the dealer's bid quote, non-market days delay quoting, and depository release adds days to the wire.

If the tax-advantaged balance you plan to roll over is small enough that a flat annual custodian fee absorbs a meaningful share of the balance every year, the drag can hurt more than a diversified paper portfolio would. Fee structures favor larger balances mathematically, and a small account can be a poor match for the wrapper even at a firm with an otherwise reasonable fee sheet.

If you are near or in required-minimum-distribution years, taking a distribution from a metals IRA means either liquidating enough to cover the RMD or taking an in-kind distribution of physical bullion. Both introduce timing and paperwork risk. Talk to a licensed tax advisor before committing to the wrapper. No dealer can solve those situations for you, and United Gold Group is not an exception.

Questions people ask about United Gold Group

Is United Gold Group a legitimate operating business?

United Gold Group is an operating precious-metals dealer. Legal entity name is UGG, Inc., a California Corporation with Secretary of State file number C4667635. The BBB profile has been open since November 18, 2020 and accredited since March 19, 2021 with an A+ letter grade. Managing Director David Bleeden is named on the profile as principal contact. Whether the firm is right for your rollover is a separate question and depends on the written fee schedule you obtain before funding.

When did United Gold Group start?

The business start date on the BBB profile is January 8, 2019. The BBB file opened November 18, 2020 and accreditation followed on March 19, 2021. The firm is roughly six years old on the calendar as of mid-2026, with the BBB relationship about five years deep. That paper trail is short by comparison with dealers whose corporate history predates the 2008 financial crisis.

What is the United Gold Group minimum investment?

No minimum-investment number is published on any United Gold Group page we could reach. It is decided during the sales call. Ask by email for the minimum funding threshold and any minimum-per-order requirement before booking a consultation. If a specific figure is quoted only verbally, request written confirmation before authorizing a transfer.

What IRA fees does United Gold Group charge?

The public site publishes no specific setup, custodian, storage or annual dollar figure. Every fee variable runs through a phone call with the specialist. Ask by email for six numbers first: setup fee, first-year and subsequent-year custodian fee at the trustee UGG routes to, storage fee at the depository option chosen, wire and termination fees, and the current buy-sell spread on the coin proposed.

Does United Gold Group offer a Silver IRA?

Silver is a first-class product on the site. A dedicated Buy Silver page appears in the main menu, and silver is included in the general Self Directed IRA framing used across the marketing pages. There is no separately published silver fee schedule. Ask the specialist to confirm that the Silver IRA fee sheet matches the Gold IRA fee sheet before you fund a silver-heavy allocation.

Does United Gold Group offer a Platinum IRA?

Yes. A Buy Platinum page appears in the main menu, and a dedicated Invest in Platinum landing page carries the platinum marketing copy. As with silver, no specific platinum fee schedule is published. Ask for the exact IRS-eligible platinum coins and bars stocked, the ask premium per ounce on each, and the buy-side spread at liquidation in writing.

Does United Gold Group offer a Palladium IRA?

No. Palladium is not offered. A crawl of the site menu, the Buy Platinum page, the Invest in Platinum landing page and the home page returned zero palladium mentions. A buyer who wants palladium exposure inside the same IRA needs a different dealer or a separate self-directed account elsewhere. Palladium remains fully IRA-eligible under federal law at .9995 fineness; the constraint is dealer catalog, not tax code.

Who is the custodian for a United Gold Group IRA?

United Gold Group does not custody metals or hold the IRA balance. The About page states the firm works with "custodial administrators" without naming a specific trustee on any public page. Ask the specialist to name the two or three self-directed IRA trustees they most often route to for accounts of your size, then request each trustee's fee schedule directly from that trustee.

Where does United Gold Group store IRA metals?

No specific depository is named on any public page we could reach. Ask which IRS-approved depository will actually receive your metals, and whether the storage is segregated or non-segregated. Home storage of IRA metal is not permitted under federal law, and any suggestion otherwise from any dealer is a red flag rather than a value-added service.

What is the United Gold Group BBB rating?

The Better Business Bureau profile at bbb.org, identifier 1216-1292125 in the Los Angeles & Silicon Valley regional office, shows an A+ letter grade with BBB Accreditation since March 19, 2021. The profile records 4 customer reviews, 2 total closed complaints across the last three years and 1 closed in the last twelve months. Numbers reflect the December 16, 2023 web.archive.org snapshot because live bbb.org returns a Cloudflare challenge to scripted fetches.

Does United Gold Group have any SEC or CFTC record?

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission EDGAR full-text search for "united gold group" returned zero direct filings as of July 2026. That is normal for a private, non-publicly-traded physical precious-metals dealer, which is regulated primarily by state consumer-protection law and by the Federal Trade Commission rather than by the SEC.

What are the United Gold Group phone numbers and addresses?

Two toll-free numbers appear across the public site and the BBB profile: (800) 753-8534 and (866) 930-3832. Two U.S. addresses appear on public pages. The BBB record and home-page schema list 7083 Hollywood Boulevard, Suite 620, Los Angeles, California 90028-8909. The About-page footer lists 22619 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu, California 90265. Both share the corporate email Corporate@UnitedGoldGroup.com.