I've been considering investing in precious metals a lot lately to hedge my assets. I have never purchased precious metals in my life for investing purposes so I am still doing some research.
There are four popular precious metals you can easily acquire.
- Gold
- Silver
- Platinum
- Palladium
Gold and silver are obviously the most popular but platinum seems the most interesting to me followed by silver. Here is what I am thinking, and remember I am just now looking at the precious metals industry for the first time.
The first thing I did was look at the 10 year charts for each
I am no expert, but the first thing I noticed was gold and palladium is sitting pretty high in the 10 year period. Silver is kind of in the middle, it's up there but not as much as gold & palladium. Platinum though is pretty low over the last 10 years. This can be interpreted in a few ways, on one hand if you believe these metals go through patterns that they may repeat and platinum has the best potential for returns as it's time to come back is due. Silver is a popular option but looking at the last 10 years it has the least potential for big gains unless something significantly changes.
Again, I am a complete laymen when it comes to precious metals and looking at the 10 year charts was my first instinct. When you look at precious metals, you typically are focused on long term not short term gains.
After looking through the charts and know I want to focus on platinum or silver, I started to look at my options. My gut instinct was to look at 1 kilo bars, as the premium on smaller pieces is pretty steep. I recently spoke with a few people about precious metals and they all recommended against purchasing 1 kilo bars as they are difficult to sell. It seems 10 oz bars are a better option if you want to avoid 1 oz coins.
It looks like a 10 oz silver bar will run around $300 based on the mint and design.
Platinum 10 oz bars are considerably more expensive and potentially harder to sell.
A lot of distributors allow you to purchase precious metals with crypto for an additional premium. I am not very comfortable doing such large transactions through the postal service sight unseen. I don't know of any precious metal dealers local to where I live. All I have seen are pawn shops paying pennies on the dollar for people pawning off family jewelry.
I am going to continue to do research and look around and decide my comfort level of buying expensive large chunks of metal through the Internet. I am still deciding the type of metal I want to invest in, my gut feeling is silver is the best bet even though platinum looks like the biggest potential based on the 10 year charts.
This is not financial advice, I am by no means an expert on precious metals and I am only sharing my thought process as I approach investing in precious metals.