“Can I carry my gold and silver across the border?” is a question I’m often asked by clients who are either planning to buy metals in a foreign country to bring home with them, or planning to hand-carry metals to an offshore location for long-term storage.

There is a common misconception that it is illegal or problematic to carry precious metals across the border into a foreign country. I believe this misconception is based primarily on the fact that travellers are asked to declare any currency or financial instruments above a certain threshold ($10,000 in Canada and the United States). Coupled with our human instinct to assume the worst whenever we lack understanding of something, most people assume it’s wrong to do so, and would rather avoid it or worse, fail to declare it.