There are a lot of ways to buy precious metals, the most basic is going to your local metals dealer and paying them cash for physical gold, silver, or other precious metals. Nowadays the best and maybe most common way to buy gold is to do it online from an established online dealer. They will offer you the metals for the current market rate and most dealers will have a private vault for customers to store their gold and silver. This will alleviate the worry of storage and theft when you buy gold or silver. Below are the top ways to guy gold and silver:

 

1.            Gold Bullion, this is the tradable and practical gold form. Bullion is defined as, a refined and stamped weight of precious metal. The price you pay will include a percentage cost to cover the refining, fabrications and shipping of the metal you choose to purchase. More of this are available if you click here. Bullion is an efficient way to buy the physical form of a precious metal, you will more than likely want to store this in a recognized insured precious metals storage facility.

 

2.            ETF's this stands for Exchange-Traded Funds. Purchasing ETF's will add gold to your portfolio but will not give you any physical metals. Typically one share of an ETF is equivalent to a tenth of an ounce.

 

3.            ETN's which stands for Exchange-Traded Notes. This is the most risky way to buy precious metals, by far. This is a debt instrument that will track an index. This might sound complicated but it really isn't. For this you will give a bank your money and upon maturity the bank will pay you a return based on how well your ETN performed. These are similar to playing the futures market. These are risky because they offer no principle protection so it is possible that you could lose your entire investment.

 

4.            Mining Stocks. This is another rather risky investment in gold and silver. These stocks are risky because they are traded with the broader equity market. This requires research and you want to invest in companies with strong production and reserve growth. Further research should look at a company's management and how they have performed in recent years. One thing to keep in mind when it comes to mining stocks is that since 2001 the worldwide production of gold has been on the decline.

 

Regardless of the price range and what the future looks like for precious metals, portfolio managers from this link recommend investing between 3 and 10%.