Gold Question

Cladiator

If you were to use gold as a long term storage of wealth, protection from inflation and perhaps a reserve emergency savings (I don't mean SHTF emergency, I mean something like unexpected medical bills that deplete your cash savings) what would be the type of gold you stored. Old European gold coinage, old U.S. gold coinage, modern bullion coinage, modern bars, small sizes/denominations (less than 1oz each), large sizes/denominations (1oz or more each) are some examples. I'd love to hear which route you would go and why.

derryb

Fractional gold eagles. Easy resell, smaller sizes are more affordable to more buyers. I would try to pick up MS69s for about the same price and have a "certified" gold coin. "Certified" becomes important at some point in the counterfeit game. Why not have something like this as your "savings" account. Pays more interest and is safer than any bank I know of.

Weiss

In an ideal world, or if you have the time and effort to seek it out:

XF-AU old US, fractional ($10, $5, $2.5) IF and only if I could get it damn close to melt slabbed by PCGS, NGC, or ANACS (in that order).

Since that seems unlikely: fractional BU eagles, unslabbed, as close to melt as I could get it.

jmski52

A mixture of different denominations of American Gold Eagles. They all have different premiums, which may or may not be there when you are ready to sell. The larger the coin the smaller the spread, and the more you buy at one time the smaller the spread. Gold Maples might fall into about the same category as well.

Foreign gold is fungible, and it can always be bought & sold, but if you live in North America it seems logical to buy Eagles & Maples. You never know what the big boys in government and on wall street are gonna do, so any discussion of confiscation, draconian tax policies or SHTF is speculative on top of the speculation in gold as a reserve savings.

gecko109

The best gold to buy for the OP's purpose is the gold with the smallest premium. Since he isnt worried about using the gold in a SHTF scenario, recognizability is not important. That means weight and fineness do not need to appear anywhere on the piece. The $5 U.S. commems probably fill this void nicer than any other form of gold. I say this because the pieces are often obtainable at melt, and are manufactured by an entity in which you can be reasonably sure they contain an accurate specified amount of gold. They also serve the purpose of being highly divisible, with roughly 4 pieces to the ounce. Divisibility is key when needing to liquidate your holdings. If you have 40 of these such coins, you can liquidate as little as 2.5% of your position at a time. Whereas if you held 10 of the 1oz pieces, your minimum liquidity becomes 10%. And with a 10oz bar (although Weiss' is ultra sweet), you now have a minimum liquidity of 100% unfortunately.

OPA

Good luck .... Unfortunately 90% of the US population has no idea what a Gold Eagle or Canadian Maple Leaf is, which means, you'd have to seek out someone from the 10% minority who does. Having said that, go with anything that identifies that it's made of Gold, weight & finesse. Heck, I saw a Candid Camera show once, where they could not give away for free, I believe it was a 1 oz Gold Eagle.

coinnerd

The people who will buy will know gold and will have the weights of most common coins memorized or willl be able to find it fast. Any common gold coin listed on the first page of the gray sheet will be easily sold to anyone making a market. I wouldn't pass on any of these close to melt.

All denominations of Mexico, England sovs, all denoms of Austria, Germany 20M, Italy 20L, France 20fr, Swiss 20fr.