There are a lot of concerns with bullion. I believe there is a proactive effort on the part of the elite to try and discourage the average person from buying gold and silver. After a huge bull market in precious metals, we seen it crash and not recover. This helps destroy the honest reputation gold and silver has obtained, and "convince" people that they are not "safe". A dollar is not always a dollar, but an ounce of gold is always an ounce of gold. Any opportunity to trade paper for metal is a good opportunity.
But let us look at the forms of bullion.
Antique coins are not necessarily safer or better than bullion, and yes they carry premiums, you end up paying more than melt value for them. But, the numismatic value is significant. It gives you the opportunity to collect something rare that isn't made any more. If you choose to buy coinage such as double eagles ($20 gold pieces), you need to bear in mind you are paying more than just the metal. You can check the value of coins at pcgs.com/prices.
Bullion coins such as gold and silver eagles are just that, bullion. They can be collectible and desirable, but they can carry too much of a premium when other options manifest themselves.
Ingots such as are available from monarchpreciousmetals.com are a great investment. You get a lot of metal for very little premium over melt value. No this isn't a paid endorsement, just genuinely interested in helping those of you secure your fortunes against the uncertain future. You won't find them involved in any scams or scandals and every ingot they make is hand poured.
Now, we will get into a bit shakier form of bullion:
There are specialty forms of bullion which carry MASSIVE premiums. Right now even with $20 an ounce silver, a 1 gram ingot (1/31 of an ounce), runs about $2 retail. This makes it about $62 an ounce to buy it in this form. They might be attractively used in making jewelry or as special gift ideas, but for buying large quantities is not so cost effective.
I advocate having the smallest units of metal which get you closest to melt. This so far has been the 90% silver Roosevelt dimes (1964 and earlier). It allows more flexibility when bartering, and is in a universally recognized form of silver which was guaranteed by the US Treasury to be what it appears to be. It is also not prone to being counterfeited because very few issues of the Roosevelt dime are worth enough to try reproducing, and there are more valuable forms of silver coins for the crooks to try and replicate.
Gold nuggets are one form of gold which can't really be counterfeited. Jewelers have made imitation nuggets, but because of the trace elements nature mixes into the gold on its own, it is very hard to reproduce the look and feel of a real gold nugget. They might do a good job at making them in some instances, but I doubt it would fool an experienced prospector. If you handle a few nuggets, it will be easy for you to know what you are looking at. Gold is unmistakable in it's feel.
There is of course the combibar made by a swiss refinery. Their bars break into 1 gram or 10 gram increments. They are available in gold silver platinum and palladium. Silver is the only metal that has an excessive premium. The rest are close enough to melt that I wouldn't feel bad buying them. Just be careful when buying from any store, online or off. You want to get the lowest possible price because it is a commodity and in the end, they are the same regardless of where you buy from. Why pay more for what you could get for less? Currently as of this writing, you can obtain 100 x 1g combibar of silver on ebay for $117 with free shipping. That makes it $1.17 a gram for silver, or $36 an ounce. You are indeed paying for the convenience of having an easily divisible bar. But on that note, a single 1 gram bar easily sells for $2. So... It is up to you to decide if it is a bargain or a ripoff.
In the end, we see the results of history. All great civilizations resorted to debasing their coinage to help pay for an ever expanding empire and the costs of maintaining those empires. We are at the height of debasement, that is, relying on mere paper. In the end, civilization always returns to commodity based money, gold and silver.
Just remember there are 31.1 grams to a troy ounce. With a little math you can make sure you are not getting ripped off. kitco.com can give you the current spot prices of all the metals. Though, I don't recommend them as a place to buy from.
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