Best place to buy gold, silver, precious metals?
 

So there's a thread in DC talking about investing in precious metals and I'm thinking about starting to buy the kids some silver. So I'm wondering where a good place is to buy it? A guy at work suggested this place.http://bullion.nwtmint.com/index.php
Anyone have any place better or tips about buying?

Always get in during the middle of a speculative bubble. Nothing ever goes wrong when that happens.

I buy all mine bullion off the back of a truck.

Just hit a brinks.

I have some gold I would sell you.

“Gold is going up because people are buying it, and people are buying it because it’s going up,”

You should buy beautiful shaped pieces (or coins) of gold, silver, platinum, etc as works of art to be displayed (securely) and admired. If your metallic work of art goes up in value then great, if not, oh well.

If you insist on looking at it as some sort of investment, then you might want to put 3-5% into it as a commodity inflation hedge, but you'd be better off going with some sort of precious metals ETF rather than aquiring the actual metal so you don't have to pay a broker, store it, pay a big fat discount to sell to a dealer, etc.

On top of that, if you make a profit off selling precious metals, you get to pay the bigger tax rate on collectibles instead of getting capital gains tax treatment on stocks. Not sure if that applies to ETF's or not, I've heard conflicting stories on the tax treatment of precious metals ETF and I'm not an accountant.

Fools gold. Invest in something useful.

Thanks this is some of what I was looking for. I actually did think about what to do with the actual silver pieces once i had them and wasn't sure. It's like everything else, sure it has a value but getting that actual value is another story. Starting to rethink this unless it's merely for the novelty of owning some Stage Coach Silver.

yeah, I'm not saying that people who buy gold and silver are idiots, they just have to know what they are doing, recognizing that buying and selling metal is expensive and taxing.

Someday if I had a bunch of money, I think I might get some really cool gold and silver coins and art, but I'll be looking at them like I would a painting. I'd aquire them because they look nice, they'd be something to show off and brag about to family and friends, but I'd plan on dying with those metallic works of art.

If I was very paranoid about the dollar and I decided I really wanted precious metals as an inflation hedge (not just gold, but diversify into all precious metals), then I'd buy a precious metals ETF. Let someone else store the metal in a heavily-guarded vault, and where I don't have to pay a massive load if I want to sell.

Buying precious metals is stupid. The Annunaki are due to arrive in a few months and they're gonna harvest it all. Money wasted. Buy Beans and rice.

Also, for those thinking that buying the actual metal is a good thing, not for the artistic "nice to have" value, but so they have some currency when the world ends and we're at economic doomsday (so they'd be suspicious about buying an ETF), my response to that is: don't buy gold, buy guns. Lots and lots of guns. If that actually happens and we're living the Mad Max life, people wont care as much about metal.

Can I get you to talk to my wife! :D

And I wasn't necessarily thinking of buying silver totally for the investment aspect, I think some of it is neat to look at and would be a cool thing to put up for the kids. If they chose to sell it then it would be their headache. I guess I thought of it as similar to buying savings bonds in a way.

And helmets.