You usually pay a 3-5% premium over spot to a reputable coin dealer to buy gold coins, and you are paid spot when you sell them. With Bitcoin, you usually pay 2-4% transaction fees to get your fiat into an exchange, 0.25% fees per trade, and 2-4% transaction fees to get your fiat out of an exchange.

I'm actually a little surprised that local coin shops haven't gotten into the cryptocurrency market.