“I don’ know where to begin!”

___________

Nobody does! 😂

Many people who do know are reluctant to discuss it, for a variety of reasons, often having to do with the pitfalls of ‘financial advice’.

Which leads to the standard disclaimer, like this: I am not an expert, I am not licensed to provide financial advice, please do your own research and consult a qualified financial professional before making any financial decision or taking any financial action, etc. Or words to that effect.

Every youtube video (thousands upon thousands of them) says repeatedly ‘This is not financial advice, consult your professional financial advisor before making any decisions’ (or similar), yada, yada, yada, standard boilerplate disclaimer.

The problem with that is that nearly all professional financial advisors are PRODUCTS of the same educational and professional system that views precious metals as ‘relics’ and will only advise on ‘establishment’ financial products, which definitely excludes precious metals.

So it’s a Catch-22.

Nobody who actually knows will help us figure out what we should do, and the people who are ‘licensed’ to tell us what we should do either don’t know what to do, or they are ideologically opposed to precious metals. Or they just don’t have any financial incentive to encourage their clients to invest in precious metals, so they steer their clients toward investments that make money for the financial advisor.

So it’s a perfect cluster-fark, like everything else in the upsidedown bass-ackwards land known as Earth, where anything that was once known as common sense is relentlessly driven to one planetary pole or the other.

I don’t presume to know any more about the subject matter than anyone else here, I probably know less than many, so I will just try to give my perspective and explain it the way I would to someone who is new to the subject, as I was, not long ago.

The first thing I would say is that it’s complicated. Not overly so, but there are definitely some considerations to be aware of.

First, here is a link to a website (one of many) that shows current metals spot prices across a list of well known online metals dealers. This is the silver link:

https://comparesilverprices.com/silver-gold-products/

And this is the gold link:

https://comparegoldprices.com/

Any of the dealers listed on that chart should be safe, but it never hurts to check their BBB ratings, in case they’ve suddenly gone off the deep end.

Which is to say trust no one, because during a crisis where metals go up in value, it usually turns out that one or more dealers has been doing something shady, selling metals they don’t actually have, charging storage fees to customers for metals that have been sold to other clients, or involved in some leverage play that goes against them, there are lots of things that can go wrong.

But during ‘normal’ times, the dealers like the ones at the links above should all be fine. Like the banks, there’s usually not a problem until there’s a run on them.

I would probably choose whoever has the lowest prices including shipping.

Maybe try buying the minimum to get free shipping (several offer free shipping with a purchase of $99) from several of the dealers, as a test, to see who provides you the best customer service and buying experience.

And maybe then try selling a portion back to them, to see how that process goes.

It may be helpful to think of precious metals as an insurance policy against financial collapse. The general idea being that if one has at least 10% in precious metals (some studies recommend up to 25%), 10% in cash or cash equivalents, and the rest of their funds in other financial assets (e.g., stocks, bonds), if the stock and bond markets crash, the precious metals markets should go to the moon, offsetting all of your losses.

And with at least 10% cash reserves (dry powder), you are in a position to take advantage of fire sale prices on blue chip companies at the bottom of a crashed stock market.

Unless one is good at timing the markets, many people suggest “layering in” to the market (precious metals or stocks). For example, if one decides to invest $10K in silver, it might be best not to invest the whole $10K at once, because somehow, the market nearly always seems to drop RIGHT AFTER YOU BUY 😁

Often it is better, using a $10K amount as an example, to make five $2,000 purchases, or ten $1,000 purchases, maybe spread out one per week, or one per month, etc., depending on your time horizon.

That way, if you happen to buy during a market rally (higher prices) on one purchase, the next purchase may be during a market dip, and overall, it averages out, similar to the dollar-cost-averaging approach.

If you are concerned that a crash is imminent, a more accelerated approach would be needed.

Once you have completed acquiring your ‘insurance policy’ amount (whatever amount that is, whatever amount you determine will offset potential losses in a financial market crash), then you might consider buying smaller amounts on a regular basis, i.e., once a week, once a month, once every two months, whatever budget and personal objectives allow.

There are at least a few considerations to think about.

1) what is the best form of silver (or gold) to acquire?

2) who might try to take it?

3) which naturally leads to: where am I going to keep it?

Let’s start with number 2.

People who might try to take it includes everybody who knows about it, if we end up in a national or global financial crisis. Everybody includes friends, family, criminals, and most dangerous of all, government.

Friends and family hopefully won’t rob you personally, but if they know and mention to anyone else that you are ‘stacking silver’ (for example), the people they mention it to (or who they in turn mention it to) might not be so respectful of your personal property.

So secrecy is a good policy.

If you buy online, the government can find out if they want to, but the bigger issue would be if at some point the government decides to essentially confiscate everyone’s precious metals by decreeing it illegal to ‘hoard’ due to the national financial crisis which they (invariably) created.

If they have done it before (and they have), then they will do it again.

How might that work today? The government might do something to crash the gold market, then require everyone to turn in their gold for $1,000 an ounce, and then once they have all the gold, revalue gold at $50,000 per ounce, or whatever dollar amount is needed to offset the national debt to a sufficient degree to back the fiat currency with gold.

Everyone already knows the government is a criminal organization, they prove it every day, so it’s best to assume there is nothing they won’t do to preserve themselves, their own wealth, and their own power.

So being discreet about any precious metals you acquire is step one, but it won’t help in the case of government confiscation.

One of the biggest issues is what’s called “counterparty risk”. If your metals are not in your personal possession, i.e., being stored in a commercial vault, there is a risk that something could happen to it involving the actions of another party.

Whoever has custody of it could go bankrupt, or just close up shop and leave with everyone’s assets.

If it is not in your personal possession, then by definition, you have exposure to counterparty risk.

Physical metals have to be stored somewhere physically. If you store it in a bank safe-deposit box, the bank becomes a counterparty.

Bank employees could steal it (it happens). The bank could declare a ‘holiday’ and you lose access to your metals until they reopen. The government could easily seize the contents of safe-deposit boxes (and does so), putting the owners of the property IN those safe-deposit boxes in the position of proving lawful ownership of the contents before returning it, which could take years and lots of $$$.

And bank safe deposit boxes have a limit on the dollar value allowed for contents, and all sorts of “limited liability” to protect the bank, should the contents of your safe-deposit box suddenly go missing.

Metals could be stored at home, and it may be a good idea to keep a SMALL amount at home, enough to provide for basic needs during an emergency, but more than that, and at some point the risks outweigh the benefits, unless you have a commercial grade bank vault and armed guards in your house, which, most people do not.

So counterparty risk is almost a necessary evil, when it comes to precious metals ownership, because any amount of precious metals valued at more than a few thousand dollars could make you a potential target for theft, not to mention risk of loss due to other factors, like fire.

You could insure your precious metals, but don’t assume they’re covered by a home insurance policy. And if you itemize and prove the value of your precious metals holdings to an insurance company, the insurance company employees (and anyone who gains access to their files) knows exactly what you have.

So it’s like herding cats. Nearly everything you do or might do is going to expose you to some other kind of counterparty risk.

There are fire-rated safes, but a quality home safe is not cheap, you have to have enough metals to make it worth the cost of a quality safe. And a quality safe is heavy. How do you get a safe delivered to your house without the whole neighborhood seeing your safe as it arrives at your door? 😂

And if the government decides to confiscate everyone’s gold (again), it won’t matter if you have a great safe, because the best safe in the world won’t be safe from our own criminal government.

Some people use commercial vaults in various states, e.g. Texas, Florida, New York, Delaware and others. None of those will do any good if the government decides to confiscate. Those commercial vault companies will all say “How high?” when Uncle Stalin says “Jump!”

Some people use commercial vaults located in other countries, which can be good or bad, depending on the country and their banking relationship with the BRoA (Banana Republic of America).

It used to be that many people in America used vaults in Canadia. To an American it is a foreign country, but still close to home.

Maybe many still do. But after Canadia’s covid performance and dictatorial targeting of political opposition, freezing peoples’ bank accounts, cutting off their access to credit cards, canceling mortgages, Canadia may not be the best place to safeguard one’s assets.

And Australia’s government went full-blown Nazi. So did New Zealand’s government.

Switzerland used to be the traditional place for securing precious metals, but their ties to the U.S. financial system gave the IRS plenty of leverage to compromise Swiss secrecy laws, and apparently many Swiss firms no longer want much to do with American customers because of the hassle involved with the U.S. financial regime.

This same problem exists everywhere the U.S. criminal regime has leverage, whether it is companies (like Brinks) or whether it is countries whose financial and political systems are easily pressured by the U.S. criminal regime.

When one’s government openly conducts itself like an international mafia organization, then shouldn’t one accept that’s what they are?

A little online research should quickly reveal at least several countries who are not subject to BRoA pressure, and who actively seek to be the new Switzerland, since Switzerland doesn’t want to fulfill that role anymore.

Countries that are reasonably safe from the clutches of the criminal home team. That doesn’t make one exempt from reporting requirements, the criminal regime always wants to know everything about American’s finances, but it does make it harder for the criminal regime to confiscate.

And unlike Switzerland, which seems to primarily cater to the very rich and often has high minimum amounts required in order to open an account, Switzerland’s competitor nations do not.

So one can start small, and add over time.

Diversification is still wise, i.e., several smaller accounts in several different companies and nations would be preferable to one account in one foreign nation.

Think defensively. When things get bad, if (when) the globull financial system collapses, powerful people are going to try to seize whatever value they can get their hands on, and that certainly includes bullion.

Hope I’m wrong, but plan as though I’m not.

So we have discussed #2 and in the process, some about #3.

That leaves #1, what is the best form of silver (or gold) to acquire?

Again, it’s a little complicated.

Basically there are physical precious metals, and there are mining stocks, and there are ETFs.

ETFs claim to hold physical metals, but if there is a crisis, who knows whether they really have the metals they claim to have? It’s just an I.O.U. This is always the problem with “paper” vs “physical”.

Owning some shares in blue chip mining companies is certainly worth looking into, but for the “insurance” part of one’s portfolio, physical metals are the only sure thing, if everything else goes down the tubes.

There is also a decision to make on the proportion of silver and gold. Generally, the older one is, the higher the percentage of gold should be.

So for example, a 30 year old might have 10% of their assets devoted to physical precious metals, and the physical precious metals might be divided 75% silver and 25% gold.

Someone in their 60s might be the opposite, 75% gold and 25% silver.

Silver should be more volatile, and silver (ultimately) should increase in value more (percentage wise) than gold in a crisis situation, for a variety of reasons, but that doesn’t guarantee it will happen. Gold is safest.

Once the proportion is determined, don’t forget to rebalance occasionally, as market values change. If you started out 25% silver and 75% gold, and due to changes in market value your portfolio has changed to 60% silver and 40% gold, you may want to sell some of that silver and buy more gold with the proceeds, to get the balance back to roughly 25% to 75%.

And remember to take tax consequences into account when making any such decisions. If you have owned for less than a year, your capital gains taxes on profits will be higher than if you have owned for more than a year before selling, etc.

What actual “metal” should one buy?

There are government minted coins in various denominations. In the U.S., there are silver Eagles (1 troy ounce), and for gold, there are Gold Eagles (1 troy oz) and smaller coins (1/2 oz, 1/4 oz, 1/10th oz).

These are legal tender and have a face value (e.g., silver dollar has a face value of $1, a 1 oz Gold Eagle has a face value of $50, and 0.9167 gold purity), but of course both are worth quite a bit more for their metal content than the face value.

Government minted coins have advantages and disadvantages.

Pros: recognized worldwide, certified purity content, attractive design

Cons: cost more (higher premium over spot price)

Many foreign countries give preferential treatment to gold coins with 0.9999 purity, which has tax / customs implications. For example, IIRC, some countries hit American Gold Eagles with a customs tax if you try to take them into a foreign country, because they are not 0.999 pure gold.

American Gold Buffaloes are 0.9999 pure gold, and therefore should not be subject to most foreign customs taxes, if I understand correctly.

Canadian Maple Leafs are 0.9999 pure, as are the gold coins of many national / sovereign mints, but some are less pure (e.g., 0.9167 pure), like South African Krugerands (and American Gold Eagles).

Here is a Gold Eagle (1 troy ounce, 0.9167 purity)

Here is a Gold Buffalo (1 troy ounce, 0.9999 purity)

Here is a Gold Canadian Maple Leaf (1 troy ounce, 0.9999 purity)

There are also a variety of numismatic gold and silver coins, primarily pre-1965 for silver, and pre-1934 for gold, if I remember correctly. These would often have been professionally graded, sealed in a tamper-proof package, and have a collectible value above and beyond their metal content value.

Most people advise leaving numismatic coins to the experts and knowlegeable collectors, because much more knowledge is required to ascertain fair value of a collectible numismatic coin, than something which is primarily valued based on it’s bullion content, like American Eagles and generic rounds, bars, etc.

Then there are privately / commercially minted (i.e., not produced by government mints) ‘coins’, which are generally called “rounds” instead of coins.

These may have any type of design on them, and should have the purity engraved or embossed into the metal.

Silver rounds are cheaper (lower premium charged over spot price) than government minted silver coins, so you can get more ounces of silver for the same amount of dollars (fiat currency) than you can get buying government issued Silver Eagles.

But government issued Silver Eagles are internationally recognized, while most privately/commercially minted ’rounds’ are not.

Then there is what is called “junk silver”, which is old (1964 or earlier) and heavily circulated (so not investment grade) American dimes, quarters, half dollars and dollars, whose silver content is 90%.

Then there are silver and gold bars, which can be government minted or privately minted (with government issued usually having a higher premium over spot price). Silver bars can be 1oz, 5oz, 10oz, 100oz or 1,000oz (and probably some in between, along with metric equivalents for foreign countries).

1,000 oz silver bars are generally for commercial purposes but also for investment purpose, and are not exactly 1,000 ounces, but close to it. So if a silver bar is 978oz, it will be stamped as 978oz, or it could be 1,017oz, and be stamped 1,017 ounces, and priced according to the number of ounces in the bar, but generically they are referred to as 1,000 oz bars.

Unlike ’rounds’ and coins, many gold and silver bars are available with a unique serial number stamped into them.

This may be an important consideration, if storing precious metals in an overseas vault.

Because there are different types of storage.

There is “pool” storage, a.k.a. “unsegregated storage”, which basically means your silver or gold goes into a big stack, or ‘pool’, with other peoples’ metals, and when someone retrieves their metal, it comes out of the ‘pool’, so you get whatever you get, in like kind. So if you physically deposited 100 Silver Eagles, you should get 100 Silver Eagles when you withdrew them, but it would not be the exact same Silver Eagles, they would just come out of the Silver Eagle pile. If you marked yours before depositing, you wouldn’t get the same ones back that you deposited.

Pool storage is cheapest, but it also has the highest counterparty risk. You are basically turning over your legal property right to the vault company, like you do to a bank when you deposit cash. They do what they want with it, and they’re supposed to give it back to you, when you want it.

If there is a run on the vault company assets (if everyone tries to withdraw their gold or silver at once), they may not have as much in the ‘pool’ pile as they’re supposed to (always happens, throughout history, ancient and modern).

A solution to this problem, at least in theory, is called ‘segregated storage’, where your metals are stored in a separate locker or similar compartment, apart from anyone else’s metals. In this scenario, whatever you deposit should be exactly the same as what you withdraw, so if you had a Silver Eagle and you marked it somehow, you should be able to find that mark when you get your Silver Eagle back.

This kind of storage costs more, because it’s more expensive for the vault company to segregate and store than it is to use the ‘pool storage’ method.

It has been a while since I investigated this subject, but basically, the idea is that segregated storage means you retain legal title to your property, so that in the event the vault company goes bankrupt, you are not treated as an unsecured creditor (who probably loses everything), you have title to your property and the vault company was strictly a custodian.

In the “pool” system, you don’t have legal title to your property, and if the vault company goes bankrupt, you are an unsecured creditor (who probably loses everything).

So to recap, in order to minimize counterparty risk as much as possible, you would ideally want:

1) foreign vault storage (for Americans that means overseas storage, since Canadia and Mexico are out of the question)

2) in a country that has a long and strong history of Western property rights protection as a foundational part of their legal system

3) offers segregated storage, in order to retain title to your property

4) in a country that will not submit to pressure or coercion from one’s home country

And this is where the serial number available on some bars (silver or gold) comes in, as a final layer of protection.

Some vaults are now providing (and more will follow, to match their competitors) photographic evidence of your segregated, stored property.

So say you open an account in Luxembourg (just a random country choice, not recommending Luxembourg, or against it) with a vault company who provides segregated storage service.

You could ship gold or silver you already own to them, but that will cost money, including insurance, postal fees, etc. And if the coins or bars are less than 0.9999 pure, there may be customs fees at the time your metals enter the foreign country.

It may be a better option if the vault company is also a precious metals dealer, as is usually the case.

If that is the case, and you currently have precious metals that you would like to store overseas, it may be more cost effective to sell your holdings and repurchase directly from the foreign vault storage company (or it may not be more cost effective, you have to run the numbers and figure it out).

Either way, whether you ship metals to the foreign vault storage company or buy from the foreign vault storage company, it would be good to choose a company that provides photo or video evidence of your purchases (or shipped metals upon arrival), and specifies in the contract that you retain and hold title to your property, and the vault company is purely a custodian with no legal claim to your property.

If you are dealing with coins or ’rounds’, you will then have photographic evidence of your property (sealed in a tamper-proof container with serial number or other account number visible).

That’s good.

However, bars offer the possibility of unique stamped or embossed serial numbers on the bar itself. So if, for example, you buy a 100oz silver bar from an overseas vault storage company, and you choose a bar produced by a mint that engraves or embosses serial numbers on the bar itself, then when you receive your photographic evidence of your purchase, that serial number will be visible in the photo, as well as listed next to your account number or other number used by the vault storage company to identify your parcels, as well as on your purchase receipt.

At that point, you have legal title to your property (specified in written contract), you have photographic evidence of your property provided by the vault / custodian, and your specific property can be positively identified by the unique serial number engraved or embossed in the bar itself.

As far as minimizing counterparty risk without personal possession goes, that may be the best you can do, at least that I am aware of.

Most of this stuff doesn’t really apply to me, I am not even a guppy, in a sea of whales and sharks, but it is very interesting subject matter just the same. I knew nothing about any of it, until I learned about the silver squeeze popularized on reddit (and all over social media), I think in February 2021, if I remember correctly.

Learning about it was like going down any other rabbit hole, it takes on a life of its own and just keeps going, and going, and going… 😁

Everything above is based on my recollection from last year when I was learning about it. I haven’t really kept up with it, it’s not like there has been a shortage of other information to consume and process since then 😲 😂

So I’m certainly not an expert. I saw a few people asking questions about it here, and didn’t see any replies. I know that can be frustrating, and since I have been at least partway down that rabbit hole in the not too distant past, I thought I might be able to provide a helpful reply.

Then it spiraled into a much longer reply than I originally intended, because once you get started, there’s always one more thing that should be mentioned.

And then one more thing…

You know how that goes 😁

And as always, I welcome any and all corrections or additions 👍