Most efficient way to buy/own physical gold and metals?

[Koolau]

Silly me waiting for a dip to buy. Have been investing in non-precious heavy metals in the meantime which is looking to be a home run.

True. If you have PMs you may also need non-precious heavy metals to "balance" your portfolio.

 

[Koolau]

I forgot to mention but when I was following precious metals closely and discussing them with others who hold them there were a couple of different strategies for making money.

One was getting to know a certain niche collectible form like certain bars that are in high demand by collectors. Keep an eye out for these specialty bars and flip them for profit.

The other way and a frequent way to make money off these metals is to play the ratio game. Follow the gold/silver ratio and switch out from one to the other based on the relative price moves of each. There are great buying opportunities when that ratio gets to high or too low relative to historical averages. I know several people that have made good money doing this kind of trading between gold and silver.

(Curious if anyone has a theory why PMs are surging NOW - even though the stock market is "recovering.")

Just my approach, but I never look at the individual components of my portfolio as "money makers" as such. I just hope the whole portfolio will exceed inflation in the long run. PMs as a "smoothing" (somewhat non-correlated "ballast") component are what I hope for. So far - LONG term - it has worked for me. The potential SHTF quality thought to be associated with gold is an added plus but YMMV.

 

[Brat]

I have some gold to be scrapped. Any recommendations?

 

[calmloki]

Haven't sold to them, but Affordable Jewelry and Precious Metals - AJPM - is in Portland and has been around a long time. I use their site for prices.

https://www.ajpm.com/ for addresses and phone

 

[BUM]

I seriously considered buying gold bars, coins, fine jewelry, and “casting grain”. Like most brokers, and bankers the gold dealers I spoke with were looking for a relationship. That's spooky to me since I wasn’t interested in regular buying and selling. As the spreads were significant. I decided that these dealers wanted me to actually hold their inventory, since it’s taxed.
I wound up buying IAU. Never regretted it. But hey, IAU won’t get me seat on the last chopper out of Dodge either.

 

[copyright1997reloaded]

I have about one year of current expenses worth of PM's (both in paper form e.g. GLD, PSLV, IAU) and physical (mostly gold in terms of $ value but also some silver). About half of this was bought years ago at lower prices. Wish I had more but also concerned about buying in at high levels. I *think* these will go considerably higher, but that doesn't make it so.

So here we are almost 60 days later, and PM's have moved up quite a bit. Gold was about $1700/oz early June, it hit $2000 today. Silver also, e.g. PSLV has doubled from the early March liquidity panic. (I have a 50% profit on some I bought 4/13/20). My only purchase/sale since 6/2 was a buy of 25x1 gram Maple Leafs mentioned earlier in the thread (to see if I like them). Unfortunately, from the time of purchase to getting them the prices have run up significantly (so now I wait to see if we can't get a decent dip sometime soon).

Both have broken out. People are starting to realize just how much excess $ has been printed that eventually will be spent on goods and services. (Right now, much of it is just inflating asset prices.) The dollar is starting to falter (e.g. against the Euro), which also puts upward pressure on PM prices (as priced in USD). It also helps that the carry cost on PM's (given interest rates) is very low.

 

[Brat]

Haven't sold to them, but Affordable Jewelry and Precious Metals - AJPM - is in Portland and has been around a long time. I use their site for prices.

https://www.ajpm.com/ for addresses and phone

Calmloki's recommendation was spot-on.