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Regarding silver and gold - Paper silver and paper gold are basically like “stock” certificates (or electronic accounts) that represent the designated amount of silver and gold. A certificate may say that you own 1000 ounces of silver, and that it is on deposit at a particular location. The concern is that it isn’t there, or at least not in the full value. There isn’t 1000 ounces of silver with your name on it sitting in the vault.

This isn’t unusual and is Ok to a certain extent. To what extent is the issue - if there’s only 1% of the amount needed to back up the represented paper certificates, then there can be problems if a few holders want to cash out. If 20% is there, then things are probably in good shape (just throwing out numbers, I don’t know what’s the right ratio).

The final part about getting more gold and silver refers to physical gold - the kind that you can hold in your hand. A piece of paper states that you have xxxx amount of gold or silver, but if it isn’t there, then you have nothing. Physical silver and gold, on the other hand, means that you have the actual gold and silver in your possession.

In the grand scheme of things, outside of the short term issues that are taking place now, it makes sense to have a small investment in physical precious metals. If nothing else, you can will them to your heirs whoever they may be. They have value, and they are a reserve that is immune to most shenanigans.

The lesson to learn is always take possession of any precious metals you buy. I learned the hard way with a company that was selling online and offering to store the metals for free. For the first three years I bought from them, I would have metals shipped to me and they always delivered beautiful product, but the shipping fee was $25 no matter how few coins I bought. After a while, I decided to purchase small batches of silver rounds (a couple per month) with the intention of trading all of them for gold once I had enough. They had always delivered, so it seemed safe, right? By the time I had enough to exchange and deliver, they had been arrested for not delivering. I lost all the rounds that probably had never existed in the year I had been storing them.

Now I buy from Provident, which gives you free shipping for orders over $300, and smaller orders can be shipped for $10. I am also going to start looking at APMEX once they have product to buy again.