Tucked away in an unassuming corner of the Westfield shopping centre in west London are a trio of vending machines. One dispenses cash, another soft drinks and water, but the final – and latest – one offers a much more expensive commodity: 24-carat gold. It's not exactly an impulse buy, is it?
The Gold to go machine is manufactured and operated by German company, Ex Oriente Lux (light from the east). They've already taken their gold-vending ATMs across the world, with machines in Europe, North America, and the Emirates. The idea is simple: take the world's reliance on the idea of gold as a solid investment and then give them quick and easy access to it. It's so simple, in fact, you wonder why no one else has done it before. The machine updates its prices every 10 minutes, based on current gold spot prices.
Back at Westfield, a young man steps up to the machine and peruses it for a couple of minutes, before whipping out his iPhone and snapping photos. Would he be interested in buying some gold? "Maybe," he answers coyly, as he walks away. "I'm going to do some maths and figure it out."
Five minutes later, apparently satisfied, he returns. He's done some research, he says, brandishing his phone again. And? "Let's just say they're making a good profit," he laughs. He is Hussein Amiri, a 26-year-old Bahraini student, who's been living in the UK for the past eight years. "I'm going to buy one," he says. Why? "As a keepsake, a souvenir. It's quite cool."
On offer are bars of different weights: 1g, 2.5g (with the distinctive London skyline engraved on its back) 5g, and a quarter of an ounce coin. For the flashier punter, there's a 250g bar, which costs in the region of £10,000. Hussein selects a 2.5g bar about half the length of his forefinger and pays £100 in cash. A couple of seconds later, a matt black gift box emerges from the machine. Inside it, the thin bar is sealed in plastic with an anti-counterfeit hologram sticker. There's some information about their money-back guarantee: Hussein has 10 days to ponder his purchase.
More people wander over – a curious elderly man on his mobility scooter, a mum and daughter, a couple who think it's a machine on which to pay their parking ticket. Tom Wheeler, a 16-year-old visiting from Liverpool, says he'd happily buy some gold. "You see all those ads offering money for your gold. It seems like a sensible investment."
One man wonders aloud if the company would consider buying gold rather than just selling it. "I'm more interested in ounces," he says, grandly.
Two colleagues, Sayeh and Rafael, stop by. "You get water and chocolate from a machine, but gold?" an intrigued but unsure Sayeh asks. "It's a bit strange," she says.
Muriel, 31, who works in the nearby BBC building, has similar qualms. "It's more than a trust thing. I like some human contact when I'm buying gold. It's an interesting idea, though."