Bishop Gold Group Review: Is This Company Legit?

Our Verdict

Bishop suits a specific person: someone rolling over a retirement account for the first time who wants a real human explaining spot price, purity rules and depository choices without pressure. The follow-up culture is real, and reviewers name their reps by first name years later. That counts for something.

Experienced buyers who want live pricing, tight spreads and a written repurchase commitment will find better fits elsewhere. The pattern across platforms is consistent: easy on the way in, slower on the way out.

My qualified recommendation is yes for modest direct bullion purchases and cautious yes for IRAs, but only after you get premiums, annual fees and exit terms in an email.

If a company hesitates to send those three numbers, that hesitation is your data. Compare it against other top options for gold IRA investing before funding anything.

What Is Bishop Gold Group?

Two paths run through the same office. The first is a straight purchase of coins or bars shipped insured to your door, typically inside 28 days. The second is a self-directed precious metals IRA, funded by rollover or transfer from an existing retirement plan.

On the IRA side, Bishop sits in the middle of a three-party arrangement. You keep the account with an approved self-directed custodian, the metals sit at an IRS-approved depository, and Bishop handles product selection, pricing and coordination between the two.

Everything begins with a conversation. There is no online checkout, no live product pricing and no self-service portal for account values, so the phone call is not optional.

Who Owns Bishop Gold Group?

Here is a gap worth naming. The company website lists no founder, no CEO and no team page.

Third-party sources conflict. Some blogs name Beau Cassidy as founder, one press release lists a chief marketing officer as media contact, and the company’s own statements have quoted “the CEO” without naming him. State records show a Wyoming formation in 2017 and California registration in 2020, structured as an LLC.

None of that suggests wrongdoing. It does mean you are handing retirement money to a firm that has chosen not to publish who runs it. Ask for the name of the principal on your first call and write down the answer.

How to Open an Account With Bishop Gold Group

The sequence is straightforward:

1. Call or submit the web form and get matched with an account executive.
2. Share basic details about your current retirement plan and goals.
3. Sign the account paperwork and transaction agreement.
4. Approval usually lands within 24 to 48 hours.
5. Fund by rollover or direct transfer from your existing custodian.
6. Choose metals and confirm pricing on a recorded purchase call.
7. Metals ship to the depository, generally within 28 days.

Now the friction. You cannot see a single price, premium or fee figure without talking to someone first. That is by design, and it puts the burden of asking on you.

Tip: Before the call, write down four questions: premium over spot on each product, total first-year fees, whether the metal is IRA-eligible bullion, and the exact repurchase terms.

What You Can Buy from Bishop Gold Group

The catalog is deeper than most phone-based dealers. Gold coins come from seven countries, including American Eagles, Canadian Maple Leafs, South African Krugerrands, Australian Kangaroos, Mexican 5 Pesos, Dutch 10 Guilders and British Sovereigns.

Gold bars run across 11 sizes, from a 1-gram wafer up to a full kilo, refined by PAMP Suisse, Perth Mint and Valcambi. Silver appears as US, Canadian and Australian coins plus bars from 1 to 100 ounces.

Platinum shows up as American Eagles, bars and rounds. Palladium comes as Canadian Maple Leafs, bars and rounds. Prices are quoted by phone only.

Which Metals Qualify for an IRA (and Which Don’t)

The IRS sets purity floors for retirement accounts: 99.5% for gold, 99.9% for silver, and 99.95% for platinum and palladium. American Gold Eagles get a legal exception at 91.67%.

Widely traded bullion clears these bars easily. Recognized bars, Eagles and Maple Leafs trade close to spot, meaning their value tracks the metal price you actually follow.

Specialty and foreign-mint collector coins are where people get hurt. They carry heavy premiums for packaging and scarcity claims, and that premium does not move with gold.

Buyers who purchase them expecting gold-price behavior often watch statements value the same coins near spot, which looks like a loss even in a rising market.

Tip: If your goal is tracking gold, stay in liquid bullion and ask for the premium over spot in writing before any money moves.

Bishop Gold Group Fees and Minimums

Bishop publishes no fee schedule and no product prices online. Everything requires a call, which is the single biggest transparency limitation here.

Figures reported by third-party sources and phone reps, not guaranteed and worth confirming yourself:

• IRA setup: around $50
• Wire transfer: around $30
• Custodian administration: around $150 per year
• Non-segregated storage: from around $100 per year
• Segregated storage: around $1.60 per $1,000 in value
• Reported minimum investment: around $10,000

Reps have said Bishop charges nothing for its own IRA setup and may cover custodian fees for the first three years. Markups appear in the transaction agreement and on the recorded confirmation call, not on the website.

Tip: Ask for one email listing every dollar amount, including the premium on each product, before you wire funds. Verbal quotes are not documentation.

The Markup That Trips People Up

This is the source of nearly every harsh complaint on record, and it is worth slowing down for.

A buyer pays a large premium above spot for an exclusive coin. Months later the custodian mails a statement that values the holding at or near spot, since that is the price feed custodians use. The account appears down 40% to 60%, even in a year when gold climbed.

Nobody stole anything. The gap between what was paid and what the coin fetches on resale simply became visible on paper. Formal complaints filed with the BBB in 2025 describe exactly this, with investors alleging premiums of 50% or more after being quoted around 1%.

One question neutralizes most of this risk: “What is the premium over spot on this exact product, and what would you pay me for it today?” Get both numbers in writing.

How Bishop Gold Group Stores and Protects Your Metals

IRA metals cannot legally sit in your closet or a home safe. They must live at an IRS-approved depository, and Bishop uses two well-known ones.

Brink’s Global Services and Delaware Depository both hold metals in your name with insurance coverage cited up to $1 billion against property and casualty loss. Custodian partners referenced across records include STRATA Trust, Kingdom Trust and Equity Trust.

You choose between non-segregated storage, where your metals sit pooled with like assets, and segregated storage, where your exact coins and bars are held apart. Segregated costs more and returns the identical items when you sell.

Storage is a genuine strength here. These are the same vaults used by far larger dealers.

Bishop Gold Group Reviews and Ratings

A headline star average is a starting point, not a verdict. Read the one-star reviews first, since that is where operating reality shows up.

Reading all five platforms side by side reveals a clean split. The glowing reviews come from people buying. The angry reviews come from people selling, or trying to.

Live Ratings Across Every Platform

Platform	Rating	Reviews
BBB	4.88/5	92
Google	4.6/5	87
Trustpilot	4.4/5	68
Yelp	4/5	15
ConsumerAffairs	3.3/5	9

Older articles cite wildly different counts, with Trustpilot alone reported at 42, 45, 136, 221 and 268 across various blogs. Current numbers beat stale ones, so check the live pages yourself.

What Customers Like

Three themes repeat across BBB, Trustpilot and Google. Reps explain products patiently and without pressure, often walking first-time buyers through spot price and storage more than once.

Follow-up is proactive. Multiple reviewers describe check-in calls every 60 to 90 days, long after commissions were earned.

Direct-buy customers report fast, well-packaged delivery and competitive pricing on standard bars. Those reviews are the company’s strongest.

The Complaints Worth Taking Seriously

Two negatives dominate. The first is liquidation delay. Reviewers with larger, older accounts describe waiting two months or more for sales to process, with unreturned calls in the meantime.

One ConsumerAffairs reviewer reported transferring roughly $600,000 and receiving a statement near $300,000.

The second is pricing opacity paired with steep coin premiums, described earlier. BBB records show 14 complaints over three years, which is modest against 92 reviews.

To be fair, Bishop responds to nearly every complaint, attributes valuation gaps to spot versus dealer bid pricing, and states it charges no fee to buy back metals it sold.

Does Bishop Gold Group Buy Your Metals Back?

Reps say buybacks carry no fee, and that is probably accurate. Yet the transaction agreement reportedly stops short of guaranteeing the company will repurchase what it sold.

Those are two different promises. “No fee” describes a price. “No obligation” describes whether the door opens at all.

For a retiree who will face required minimum distributions at 73, the exit ramp matters more than the entrance. A dealer with a published repurchase commitment gives you a contractual off-switch. A dealer that reserves the right to decline gives you a maybe.

Plenty of firms operate the second way and it breaks no rules. Just get the answer in writing before your metal sits in a vault three states away.

Is Bishop Gold Group Legit?

Yes. Bishop Gold Group is a registered California LLC, formed in 2017, BBB-accredited since 2020 with an A+ grade, storing metals at two of the most recognized depositories in the country. No federal enforcement actions or major lawsuits appear in public records.

Legitimacy and suitability are separate questions. A real company can still sell you a product with a premium you did not fully price, or hold exit terms you never read.

So treat the star ratings as an opening, not an answer. Confirm the premium, the annual fee stack and the repurchase terms in an email, and match your scrutiny to the size of the transfer. A $5,000 bullion order and a $250,000 rollover deserve different levels of homework.