On any given day there are countless numbers of events that could potentially alter our way of living permanently. Whether it be wars, governmental collapse, or natural disaster, the possibility is always there. Should any of the aforementioned event occur it is obviously good to have proper amounts of food and shelter, but those two things will only take you so far. Owning gold and silver in the event of a mega-disaster is, in many ways, just as important as having enough food to eat and a place to lay your head.
The reason behind this is because you will need something in order to store your own wealth as well as make it possible to purchase future provisions. In the event of a major, life altering disaster paper money will become more or less worthless. When the infrastructure and government of a nation collapses, unless their paper money is backed up by gold or silver, the paper money is no more valuable than a similarly sized piece of computer paper. Gold, on the other hand, has been valued for thousands of years and will undoubtedly continue to be in the event of a disaster. The purpose of this article is to explain the benefits of owning gold and/or silver in an effort to prepare yourself for the unexpected.
Coins vs. Bars
As you may or may not be aware, gold and silver can be found in two major forms; bars and coins. While some of these bars and coins may be similar in weight and size, they are still very different. The first and most major difference is that coins are produced by government mints whereas bars are produced by a seemingly countless number of privately owned companies that are not limited to one single country.
You may be thinking that it doesn’t matter whether it is produced by a mint or a private company, but it really does. For example, only the US Mint can produce the American Eagle coin, but the coin is bought by people all over the world. If the US Mint wants to make more money all they have to do is limit the amount of coins they produce in order to drive the price up. Companies that make gold bars cannot limit their output because if they do so in order to derive a higher profit, another private mint will produce an increased number of bars in order to fill the void left by the company that limited their production.
For this same reason you may often spend more money on a gold coin that is the same size, weight, and purity because coins are more often seen as collector items than gold bars are. In the event of a disaster the difference will likely not matter at all, but when you are making a purchase there is a large difference between gold bars and coins.
Timing Your Buys
If you are at all familiar with the stock market and how it works, the first rule of thumb is to only make a purchase when the price of your stock has dropped relative to its recent value. The same applies with gold and silver as the value of these metals is always changing, much like stocks on a stock market, only less drastic.
For this reason it becomes important for you to pay attention to the current values of precious metals as it will then become easier to make a purchase when the value drops. If you do not bother with following metals price trends then you run the risk of purchasing gold at a peak only to see its value drop immediately afterwards. There are countless resources for you to take advantage of that will help you be able to better understand how the precious metals market works as well as what events influence the movement of spot values of gold and silver.
Where to Buy
Now that you know the basics about investing in gold and silver you may now be interested in where and how you can make a purchase. Once again, when it comes to buying metals you basically have two options; buy online or buy at a brick and mortar store. I am not going to waste your time talking about brick and mortar dealers of precious metals because they are often inconvenient, will not have the product you are looking for, and can be located a great distance away. Nowadays the most common way to purchase precious metals is by making a purchase online.
Online dealers not only make your life easier in that you don’t even have to leave your house in order to buy gold or silver but they also have much wider selections across the multitudes of sites that exist. When you go to a brick and mortar store you are only limited to the selection there, whereas online if you do not like the selection of one site a few clicks of the mouse will take you to another one.
BuySilverBullion.com is a great resource as they are a site that lists the different sellers of precious metals online. Additionally, they can be trusted as they only list the most reputable, reliable sites on the web.