Shopping for gold and silver? This is a time honored tradition. Gold and Silver has been respected as a store of beauty, wealth and value in every major civilization around the world for the past 3000 years.
There are various ways to obtain gold and silver. If you want to go dig it up yourself, you might find it in veins, nuggets or flakes. After that, it is sent to the refiner where it is purified and placed into measurable shapes and sizes as bars or coins. From there it can be collected for value or made into fine art work or jewelry.
You might ask yourself, shop for gold or silver? What are you looking to get when you make your purchase? Do you want beautiful objects of art? Do you want fine jewelry to adorn yourself? Do you want to protect your purchasing power from the devaluing paper dollar?
More paper money is printed to appear to be paying for excessive government spending. As the amount of paper money increases, each single dollar bill goes down in purchasing value. This will mean that it takes more dollars to buy gold and silver. The value of the dollar compared to gold and silver is actually going down so it takes more dollars to buy the same amount of gold and silver.
It will take more dollars to buy all kinds of commodities as well, such as food, metals, oil and gas and building materials etc. In every case where printed money has been used, it has ended with run away inflation where it takes more and more paper money units, such as dollars, to buy a loaf of bread.
It is a good thing that you are shopping for gold and silver. Bars or coins are the most popular ways to obtain precious metals. They can be purchased at the spot price of the metals plus a premium charge by the dealer.
You can also purchase 1964 and earlier silver coins in the denominations of 10 cents, 25 cents, 50 cents or one dollar. They are 90 % silver. Unless the particular coins are very rare, these are called "junk" silver and can be purchased by the bag.
These are very valuable in case of turbulence in the economy and are sometimes called "suvival" coin. They are recognizable as US coinage and readily acceptable by most Americans. The value is in the fact that they are silver and almost certainly not counterfeit.
Silver or Gold coins or bars, which are 999% pure, are bought and sold closer to the spot price of the metals. When "junk" silver coins are brought in to be sold to a dealer, you will be paid only for the value of the silver content. There is usually no value in the coins themselves. You will also be charged a price for the melting down of the silver to be purified to 999% pure. "Junk" Silver is usually bought and kept as a safetly stash in case of dire economic times.
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