Goldline International
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| Private company | |
| Genre | Gold and precious metals trading company |
| Headquarters | Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
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Area served
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United States and Canada |
| Website | Goldline.com |
Goldline, LLC is a retail seller of gold and silver coins, and other precious metals for investors and collectors. Headquartered in Los Angeles, California, Goldline has more than 350 employees and an estimated $737 million in 2010 revenues.
Goldline traces its formation to a Deak & Co. subsidiary created in 1960, a firm that in the late 1970s was the largest storefront gold retailer and later went into bankruptcy in the 1980s. The company was later bought and sold several times in the ensuing years.
Goldline advertises on several television channels and also sponsors some conservative radio talk shows.
Nicholas Deak, a Hungarian immigrant, founded Deak & Co. in 1939 and served in the OSS (precursor to the CIA) during World War II. Deak & Co. specialized in foreign exchange, gold coins and bullion, and was considered a pioneer in the business.
By the early 1980s, the company was the largest retailer of gold bullion and the oldest and largest retail foreign exchange dealer in the United States. While Deak described himself as a gold bug, the company felt the strain of growing too rapidly during the gold economic bubble which burst by 1982. At that point, they planned on expanding into the wholesale market, offering services to companies instead of the public. The company was the country's leading seller of South Africa's Krugerrand before it was pressured to halt sales because of South Africa's apartheid system in 1985.
In 1984, Deak & Co. faced allegations from the President's Commission on Organized Crime that they laundered money for Latin American drug traffickers, facilitated the Lockheed bribery scandals, and smuggled currency from the Philippines. As a result, shortly thereafter, Deak & Co. declared bankruptcy in order to reorganize. In 1985, the company was purchased by a Singapore lawyer for $52 million — the most valued asset was Deak's Swiss bank. In 1986, the foreign exchange and gold business was sold to Australia's Martin Properties Ltd. (later renamed Deak Morgan) for $12 million. In the following year, the company was transferred to New Zealand based NZI and expanded its gold coin dealerships by one-third. At the same time, Deak Investor Services, Inc. changed its name to Deak International Goldline Ltd.
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