Most Gold IRA investors spend weeks comparing custodians and about five minutes thinking about where the metal will actually sit. That is backwards. The depository holds the asset, insures it, and charges an annual fee for the privilege, and in practice almost every custodian routes to one of the same handful of vault operators.
What an IRS-Approved Depository Actually Does
Physical metals in an IRA cannot sit in your safe, your bank box or your closet. The tax code requires that IRA assets be held by a qualified trustee or an approved non-bank custodian, which is why the depository exists as a separate party from the custodian and the dealer. The custodian is the administrative owner of record. The dealer sold you the metal. The depository is the one physically holding it and carrying the insurance.
Only specific vaults qualify. Delaware Depository, for example, operates several facilities, but its Wilmington, Delaware and Boulder City, Nevada vaults are the ones approved for IRA precious metals. That distinction matters if a dealer mentions a vault location that does not appear on your custodian’s approved list.
What this means for you: the depository is not a footnote in the paperwork. It is the counterparty holding your retirement asset, and its fee is a permanent annual drag on the account.
Fees Compared Across the Three Major Vaults
Published figures vary because most pricing flows through the custodian rather than being posted publicly, but the widely reported schedules for the three most common facilities look roughly like this.
Delaware Depository. Commingled storage is commonly quoted at 0.50 percent of value with a semiannual minimum around $25, and segregated storage at 1.5 percent with a semiannual minimum around $50. Some custodians instead publish a per-thousand schedule of roughly $1.00 per $1,000 for commingled with a $125 annual minimum, and about $1.80 per $1,000 for segregated with a $220 annual minimum. The two structures are not identical, which is exactly why the number on your custodian’s fee sheet is the one that counts.
Brink’s Global Services. Reported pricing runs around $1.20 per $1,000 of account value for commingled storage with a minimum near $125 a year, and about $2.00 per $1,000 for segregated with a minimum near $200 a year. Brink’s brings the largest vault network of the three, with facilities across multiple states and internationally.
IDS Group. International Depository Services is generally reported in the range of 0.30 percent to 0.65 percent of account value, and it is the outlier on segregated pricing: IDS offers segregated storage on investor accounts at no additional charge, which is unusual in this market. IDS operates facilities in New Castle, Delaware, Dallas, Texas, and Canada.
Run the math on your own balance rather than comparing percentages in the abstract. On a $50,000 account, a 0.50 percent commingled rate is $250 a year, while a per-thousand schedule with a $125 minimum lands at roughly half that. On a $500,000 account, the percentage structure becomes the expensive one, and a flat or capped schedule wins by a wide margin.
Segregated Versus Commingled at Each Facility
Commingled storage, sometimes labeled non-segregated or allocated pool storage, means your metals are stored alongside other clients’ identical products. You own a specific quantity of a specific item, and you are entitled to that quantity on withdrawal, but not necessarily the exact coins you sent in.
Segregated storage means your specific bars and coins sit in their own space, tagged to your account, and the items that come back out are the items that went in. For generic bullion this distinction is mostly psychological. For bars with specific serial numbers, or for investors who care about provenance, it is meaningful. A serial number only carries weight if the refiner behind it is one the market recognises, so it is worth settling which gold bar brands qualify for a Gold IRA before the metal ever reaches the vault.
The pricing gap is where the three vaults diverge most. At Delaware Depository, segregated storage can cost roughly three times commingled under the percentage schedule. At Brink’s the premium is closer to 65 percent. At IDS, segregated is standard on investor accounts with no premium at all.
What this means for you: if segregated storage matters to you, the depository choice can change your annual cost more than the custodian choice does.
Insurance and Security Coverage
All three vaults carry all-risk insurance underwritten through Lloyd’s of London, which is the market standard in this industry.
Delaware Depository reports $1 billion in aggregate all-risk coverage, applying to metals in storage and in transit, and operates Class 3 UL-rated vaults. IDS states 100 percent insurance protection through an all-risk Lloyd’s policy across its Delaware, Texas and Canada facilities. Brink’s carries Lloyd’s coverage across its network as well.
Read the exclusions rather than the headline number. All-risk policies in this sector typically cover physical loss and damage, theft, employee dishonesty, mysterious disappearance and natural disasters such as fire and flood, while excluding acts of war, terrorism, cyber-attack and nuclear or chemical contamination. Also note that an aggregate limit is a limit across the whole facility, not a per-client guarantee. Ask your custodian to confirm the policy in force, the carrier, and whether coverage applies to metals in transit during the funding period, which is when the metal is most exposed.
Why Published Pricing Varies So Much
Brink’s and IDS generally do not publish retail IRA pricing, because they are not selling to you directly. They are institutional vault operators contracting with custodians, and the custodian marks the storage fee into its own schedule. Delaware Depository publishes more, which is why its numbers circulate most widely and are quoted the most inconsistently.
That opacity is itself useful information. If a Gold IRA salesperson quotes you a storage fee without naming the depository, that is a fair question to press on. So is asking whether the storage fee is fixed or scales with account value, because a percentage-based fee on a rising gold price means a rising bill every year for storing the exact same bars.
How to Confirm Which Depository Holds Your Metal
Three checks are worth doing before and after funding.
- Ask the custodian, in writing, which depository and which specific vault location will hold the metal, and get the storage type (segregated or commingled) confirmed in the same message.
- After the purchase settles, request the depository holdings statement or inventory report. This should list product, quantity and, for segregated storage with serialized bars, the serial numbers.
- Verify the statement comes from the depository, not just a summary generated by the dealer. A dealer-produced document is not independent confirmation that metal exists in a vault.
If a company resists any of these, treat it as a serious warning sign rather than an administrative inconvenience. More detail on the general rules for IRA-held assets is available from the IRS.
Choosing Based on Account Size and Storage Type
There is no single best depository, and any article that declares one is not doing the math.
For smaller accounts, roughly under $100,000, minimum fees dominate. A percentage-based schedule with a low minimum usually beats a flat structure, and commingled storage keeps the annual cost near the floor.
For mid-sized accounts, the segregated premium becomes the deciding variable. If segregated storage matters to you at this size, IDS pricing is structurally hard to beat because the premium is zero.
For larger accounts, percentage-based storage becomes the expensive option, and it compounds as gold appreciates. Look for capped or flat schedules, and be aware that a 1.5 percent segregated rate on a $400,000 account is $6,000 a year, which is a very different conversation from $150.
The Key Takeaway
Delaware Depository, Brink’s and IDS are all IRS-approved, Lloyd’s-insured, and operationally sound. The real differences are pricing structure and how each one treats segregated storage, and those differences scale with your balance. Decide what storage type you want first, then price that specific choice at each vault against your actual account size, and get the depository name and vault location confirmed in writing before you wire any money.
