It was back in early January of this year that the Golden Nugget downtown installed a gold-dispensing vending or "ATM" machine, which you can find near the front desk in the Carson Tower. It was the second such machine in the U.S. -- the first arrived in Boca Raton last year -- and the 16th of its kind in the world.
The first-ever "Gold To Go" machine was installed in Abu Dhabi's Emirates Palace hotel in May 2011 and was so popular it had to be restocked every two days. Ex Oriente Lux, the company behind the high-end gimmick, has also installed Gold To Go machines in Germany, Spain, and Italy so far, to our knowledge, with plans to increase their coverage to a few hundred machines worldwide.
The machines work like any other vending machine and accept credit or debit card payments in exchange for dispensing 24-karat gold in coin or bar form, with the latter weighing between 1 and 250 grams. We can't tell you how much a coin or gold bar will cost you, since the prices are refigured automatically every 10 minutes to reflect market fluctuations. At the time of this writing, however, one gram of gold would set you back $52.65 (plus, add on a little for packaging, certification, and a 5 percent markup).
