I am now going to assume that you dear reader…
You have studied and learned the fundamental reasons to buy silver and gold today and you are also conscience of many of the possible pitfalls involved with silver and gold investing.
You understand a naive investor can lose a lot (if not all of their wealth) using leverage, futures, options, or by majority buying collector coins, proof coins, mining shares, etc.
My suggestion of the safest method of gaining exposure to the value of silver and gold is what I do personally. I only buy well-recognized silver and gold bullion hallmarks or brands. More on which ones later.
For now I will assume you are not keen on staying in the financial matrix by buying Exchange Traded Funds or Exchange Traded Products… often called ETFs or ETPs for short.
I am confident you know that Mining Shares, Leverage Accounts, Paper Gold Schemes, Unallocated Gold & Silver Pools, all have very real risks of bankruptcy and can easily take all of an investor’s capital if the worst comes to pass.
Come on, you’ve made it this far. You have to be pretty savvy by now.
You likely know by now the best most intelligent way to gain upside exposure to silver and gold while limiting your downside risks it to begin buying bullion and taking first hand possession or delivery. If you didn’t know that by now, burn that fact into your brain.
For the sake of clarity let me finally define the often-misunderstood term ➜ Bullion, so we can all be on the same page.
Bullion – (n) physical silver or gold (in a bar, coin, or round form) is almost entirely valued on its market or melt value alone.
Silver and gold bullion are some of the only assets you can wholly own that are not simultaneously someone else’s liability.
Unlike most “assets” in our hyper-financialized world, physical silver and gold are money par excellence which need no counterparties to fulfill their end of any contract, decree, or faith based promise of value.
Bullion cannot go bankrupt and so long as there are human beings around, bullion will have value. Bullion is also one of the only remaining assets in the world that are virtually untraceable and can remain fully private if you so wish.
The next article in our Beginners’ Guide to Buying Physical Bullion will compare paper vs. physical metals.