It shouldn’t be so easy to buy gold, if gold’s price will surely rise . . . somebody HAD to sell the gold to Zell. That means the person/company who owned the gold Zell bought, valued the cash more than the certain-to-rise gold. Otherwise, they would have held the gold for the windfall profit.
“… valued the cash more than the certain-to-rise gold…”
My PM dealer is charging market price for silver but has raised his commission from about a buck an oz to $5.
IMO, those people make their living off the commissions rather than speculating. If you check some of those Precious Metal sellers' sites, they will have wording like "These items are on a slight delay with an expected ship date of xxxx. Your entire order will ship upon their arrival."
That indicates to me that they sell stuff they don't have and buy futures to protect themselves.