Imagine two restaurants.
The first one charges you two dollars for bread. It says so on the menu. You see it on the bill. You might grumble, but you knew.
The second one gives you free bread and charges ninety dollars for a steak that cost them eleven.
Most people walk out of the second restaurant annoyed about the bread.
That is the gold IRA industry in one metaphor, and it explains why so many people research the wrong number for weeks and then get surprised years later.
Fees are the bread. Markups are the steak.
They are not the same thing, they are not collected by the same people, and one of them is roughly ten times larger than the other. Let us separate them properly.