As a long-time (mainly) silver buyer (and...seller) with some gold (wish it were more) what I would recommend is to just simply buy *some*. Not a lot. There is this threshold thing that people on the sidelines have to pass through, and this is, being the owner of *some* versus the owner of *none*. $100 will buy you 3 silver eagles. Beautiful coins, by any measure. Or, you could buy generic rounds/bars and heft them in your hands if you think that’s sexier than having silver eagles which you really should not handle too much if at all. Some people like junk silver (pre-1964 coins) but you’ll probably feel better getting 3 beautiful shiny coins rather than 16 worn old quarters. Try to buy them locally, preferably from a seller at a coinshow (coinshows.com) and spending $3 admission to blow off a weekend afternoon wandering around a coinshow if you can find one locally will give you an idea of how much (some, enough) people value this stuff. The coinshow is so that 1: you don’t pay $25 incoming freight and 2: you avoid sales tax with a cash transaction, because most states have a $1500 or $2500 minimum purchase below which you have to pay sales tax.
And that’s that. Don’t overthink it. Lotta times, those dumb chunks of metal are smarter than the smartest folks who tout them or ponder them.
The idea is to dollar cost average into owning some gold or silver and just see how you like it. And a secondary notion is, you have to see how you like owning chunks of metal versus green dollars. Because that is the nature of the trade you make. You take dollars which you spend without thinking about it into metal which you might have to hang onto for 5 years and which does nothing in that time. Maybe you hate owning the metal. But, at small dollar, you are not making a life-morphing decision to change all your assets into gold or even 50% or even 25% or even 10%. Follow the price periodically (kitco.com or APMEX.com)
And that’s it. It (silver or gold, whichever you prefer) might double, it might do nothing, it might lose $5 (silver) and gold could lose $100 or even more (that would be on a (now) $1805 Eagle) But you have to find a comfort level. Most people have no issue owning shares of stock, but, before they own a single share, it feels weird to buy this synthetic thing that has this price and you can look it up and read news about it. Silver/gold are not much different in some ways and are absolutely different in some ways.
Thanks to all for the great advice. My primary goal is to convert IRA/retirement savings $$ as an insurance policy against obama attempting to get hold of it. I may be paranoid but I wouldn’t put it past that barrel of snakes in the current administration to try it.