bar: For physical silver or gold that I want to hold in my actual possession I get mine from Texas Precious Metals in Shiner, TX. They ship for free. Prices are competitive. I've never had a issue with them. Good service and generally a decent inventory, although all bullion dealers are suffering from short supplies. And premiums are high due to the shortage of physical metals. Beyond that I buy gold from "Vaulted". You buy at only 01.8% over spot price and the gold is stored for you at The Royal Canadian Mint. No issues with worrying about theft. delivery back and forth, etc. And the storage fees t 0.4% per year are the lowest in the industry. The company behind Vaulted is McAlvany ICA which is also a Bullion Dealer. With Vaulted you can buy or sell Gold 24 hrs a day and have your money transferred to your checking account. You can buy the same way. You wait for a day when Gold gets monkey hammered and you buy at Spot plus 1.8%. Bullion dealers are selling one ounce gold coins and getting about an $80 premium on one ounce gold coins, which is close to 4.5% premium. So Vaulted can save you a lot of money.
Personally I only hold a decent quantity of Canadian Silver Maples. I have several Monster boxes (500) of them. It is insurance against serious SHTF should that happen. I figure silver coins can be used to buy food if we ever got a Dollar collapse. Gold coins are a good store of value but they'd be difficult to use as "emergency money". I have a few in my possession. But it's an insignificant amount. There is also a company called GoldMoney where you can buy fully reserved gold bullion and you can choose to store them in fully insured vaults in Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, Germany, The UK and the USA. Some advisors recommend that people with significant gold holdings divide their holdings in several overseas vaults. I have not yet done this yet but may do so in the future. I do not trust our government. Actually I don't trust most governments. But were I looking for places to stash some wealth I'd go with Singapore and Switzerland. And finally SchiffGold has a program with the Perth Mint in Australia. You can buy and hold bullion directly with the Perth Mint.
I hope this helps
