Gold For Survival Purposes

In the event of a major financial disruption, it is possible that banks may not be open for a period of time, and they might also fail. These things could limit your ability to get to your bank assets.

This is also true of anything that is stored in your safe deposit box at the bank. You might not be able to get to it. For survival purposes, it is advantageous to have some of your assets in a form that can be available in an emergency.

Gold and silver both have several things going for them as a survival investment.

WHY GOLD?

Gold has been used as a wealth storage device for thousands of years. It has a proven track record of always having value. In the case of a hyper-inflation, gold is very likely to rise in concert with the reduction of currency value and maintain approximately its same value to buy goods and services.

For gold to have valuable in a survival sense, it needs to be something that you could potentially be able to trade with someone else for needed items.

PHYSICAL GOLD...

By physical gold I mean gold that you take ownership of where you actually own the metal in your own hands. 

Gold is very portable, and at present prices you could store $100,000 in 100 ounces of gold which weighs a little over 6 pounds (less than a gallon of milk that weighs 8 pounds)...

Physical Gold can be purchased in coin form, in bullion form, or in jewelry form.  Let's look at each..

Gold Coins: 

It is recommended to use coins that are well known in the area you live in.  In the USA, this means that you are best to stick with American Gold Eagles which come in 1 ounce, 1/2 ounce, 1/4 ounce and 1/10 ounce coins.  These coins are still minted today in these sizes and they are marked $50, $20, $10 and $5.

When buying gold coins, you are buying the coins for the gold value. For survival purposes you are not looking to purchase numismatic-value coins.  The condition of the coin is NOT an issue as long as the weight is still there and you can still tell what it is.  Rare years, mint marks, or special proofs or sets are of no additional value in a real emergency.  If you want to collect rare coins for their investment value, this is a different topic entirely.

The main advantage of well-known coins is that they are extremely difficult to fake. You can be pretty sure that a one ounce gold eagle is solid gold.

Gold Bullion: 

Gold bullion is gold that has been formed into bar form and marked with the value.  It potentially could be fake on the inside and gold only on the outside and it might be difficult to prove otherwise without rigorous analysis.  So, it is not as good for storing value that you might want to later trade with someone else.

Jewelry:   

When gold is used in jewelry, it is usually mixed with other metal for performance reasons.  Pure gold is 24K but this is too soft for most jewelry.  To figure out the gold content of other "Karat" gold take the number of karats and divide by 24 to get the percent gold.  So 18K is 18/24 = 75% gold.  14K is 14/24 = 58.5% gold.  10K is 10/24 = 42% gold.  Anything less than 10K is not allowed to be called "gold" jewelry.

ELECTRONIC GOLD...

Electronic gold or e-gold is usually in the form of remotely stored gold that you own but which someone else stores for you.  There are a number of firms that will sell you gold and store it for you for a nominal fee.  They will also send it to you on demand.  Although this has value as an asset protection strategy, in the case of a major financial collapse, there might be issues with redeeming your gold.

You can also purchase Gold ETFs and Gold Mining stocks.  These can be traded in a normal brokerage account or within your retirement accounts as a hedge against currency devaluation. 

Electronic gold can be an intelligent way to invest in precious metals but for survival purposes it is a good idea to have at least a portion of your gold in physical form that you will have available in the event of a major catastrophe...