by As well as being financially rewarding, collecting precious metals such as silver, gold, or coins can be a lot of fun. These tangible items are commonly referred to “hard assets” since they are heavier that most other commodities and collectibles. Someone once joked that “if you drop an item on your toes, and it hurts”, it’s likely that it’s a hard asset and valuable. With 50 ozs. silver or a brick gold – ouch! You can buy physical gold IRA in this site.
Due to the rise in price over the past few decades, precious metals have been gaining renewed interest. Actually, the bull market in silver has been ongoing for 5–6 years. Gold rose from less than $300 to just shy of $1,000 an ounce, coincident with the lows during the last bear stock market in 2002. This surge was greater than those seen in most traditional financial assets, such as stocks and bonds, money market, and money market. Silver, the industrial metal that is the most popular, rose almost fourfold per an ounce. This corresponds to a higher percent gain than in gold over these five years.
There are only two ways you can invest or collect in this space. You have two options. One, you can purchase physical metal and then store it in the hope that its value will rise. Two, you can also collect numismatic (fancy for coin collecting) pieces which have both collector and gold/silver content. Since that is how I got my start as a teenager, coins are what I prefer. Since wages back then were low, as they are today, I was restricted to silver coins and some one-ounce ingots. Gold was out of my price range. My father signed up to be a dealer in silver with a mine company, which was riding the wave that investor speculation brought about. In 1980 silver had risen to more than $50 per an ounce. This piqued my curiosity. Later, my parents gifted me with a small stash of silver dollars. This was after I realized how much I appreciated the coins I had saved. Las Vegas slot machines were open to silver dollars in the 1940’s/50’s when you gambled. My Grandpa knew what he was doing. He had kept them in Ohio all these years and passed them along to my Father. It was fun to sort and record their value. They ranged from 1870’s to 1920’s. It was something I enjoyed and never traded any coins. I was familiar enough with the United States’ common series consisting of cents or nickels, dimes or dollars to collect them.
Although silver and gold do not have a track record of making profits over long periods, they are still profitable. Prices have risen in recent years after long periods of suffering. In 1980, gold was $850. The Dow Jones stockindex was just 1,000. The inflation has decimated your profits, if you have any, and you have lost a lot just by owning physical gold or silver in the last 25 years. The metals are volatile and rise and fall in times of investor panic (recent bank and mortgage troubles). In my opinion, collecting coins over time has resulted in better and predictable returns, even if they don’t contain silver or gold, such as the coppers cents.