Why Not Gold?

Many precious metals investors buy gold coins instead of silver such as silver bullion coins, silver rounds, and junk silver. Gold offers a way to consolidate more wealth in a smaller area since it is much more valuable. Gold has also been a monetary instrument for thousands of years and highly valued by a wide variety of civilizations. It is only reasonable to question why a US citizen living in the USA has an advantage buying silver over gold.


In a situation of total financial economic collapse, survival coins would be needed for bartering for food and basic needs. The smaller value silver coins would be a more reasonable item for trading. Plus, the old US pre-1965 coins are familiar to most people and would be widely accepted as valuable.

A more compelling argument against gold is the possibility that it may become illegal to own. On April 5, 1933, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102 "forbidding the Hoarding of Gold Coin, Gold Bullion, and Gold Certificates". US citizens had to turn over their gold to the Federal Reserve in exchange for $20.67 per troy ounce. The penalty was $10,000 and up to ten years in prison. Some gold dealers today have persuaded investors to pay high premiums on old collector gold coins with the idea that they would not be recalled. The rationale for this is that President Roosevelt exempted "gold coins having recognized special value to collectors of rare and unusual coins." However, nobody knows what any possible future government recall may consist of, if they would exempt rare coins, and if they did, what would be classified as rare. So simply buying old gold coins instead of newly minted gold coins or gold bullion is no real assurance that they are anymore safe from Uncle Sam's reach.

Buying junk silver coins is one of the safest investments in hard assets that any investor could make. It is likely that having old 90 percent silver coins would be much preferred over other types of silver bullion.