How to Purchase Precious Metals Online
How to Purchase Precious Metals Online
If you want to buy precious metals online, you can’t go into it willy-nilly. Buying precious metals is a serious investment. Not only will you have to make sure you’re buying from a legitimate precious metals dealer, you need to consider how you’re going to store and protect your investment.
Precious metals are good investments, especially for long-term asset protection. Precious metals aren’t affected by the forces that can make a country’s economy fluctuate. They are liquid assets, meaning you can easily turn them into cash. They are also portable–you can take your investment with you and have a physical representation of your investment rather than some set of numbers on a printed page.
Here’s a quick guide to buying precious metals online.
1. For starters, there are five different ways you can invest in precious metals–coins and bars, certificates, precious metals mutual funds, stock in mining companies, and gold and metal futures.
2. If you are investing in precious metals to diversify your investment holdings, you should always invest in tangible metals–coins or bars. Before investing in tangible metals online, check the US Mint’s approved list of metals dealers.
3. Precious metal bars (also called bullion) is usually made up of the purest form of metals. Metal coins (also known as numismatics) are minted coins, usually minted to mark special occasions. These may not be as pure as bars or bullion.
4. Search for reputable online precious metals dealers. Usually, the best place to buy precious metals online is a dealer that also has a land-based business. To make sure a dealer is reputable, check how long the metals dealer has been in business.
5. Shop around. Different dealers have different markups and fees for selling or storing precious metals. The most popular way to invest in gold, for instance, is the 1 troy ounce coin or bar–these are easy to buy and sell and easy to store, but buying in small sizes usually results in higher fees. Heavier amounts of precious metals will cost less in the long-haul, but are more difficult to store and protect.
6. Choose to buy precious metals certificates online if you don’t want the hassle of storing and protecting physical metals. A metals certificate indicates that you own a specific quantity of a specific metal, but you don’t have to do any physical storage of the metal yourself.
7. Another good online precious metals investment is to invest in stocks and mutual funds that are investments in precious metals. Precious metals funds are the most stable metal investment on paper, mostly because they are diversified and managed unlike stocks. A purchase of stock is an investment in a single company.
Investments in metal futures are the most dangerous form of metal investing, because these investments are subject to the same market fluctuations that make national economies go up and down.
Investing in precious metals is a smart choice when the economy is in trouble, but you should always keep track of your investments by looking at the daily market price.