FYI - my family and friends think I am nuts for buying silver maples and eagles.
I got this friend who has accumulated some gold things.
He says that for a short term outage of civilization, like a two or three month long issue the gold bits would be handy to have.
If the bad times are series, like 3+ YEARS then the gold and other expensive things will be useless. The currency will be ammo and food. You can’t eat gold.