A quick guide to physically buying gold online in 2022
Have you found yourself looking to expand or diversify your portfolio to invest in something new? For some investors, choosing gold as an additional investment is a great move to create a stronger and better portfolio. Obtaining gold these days is also quite simple and readily available online. So how do you go about buying gold online? To begin with, you need to decide what type of gold to get. Mining futures? Stocks? Exchange-traded funds? How about physical gold in the form of jewelry, coins, bullion, and bars? Regardless of your choice, there are plenty of options to suit any portfolio. Out of all these options, physical gold has quite a few excellent benefits and it’s easy to get online. Here’s a short guide to buying physical gold online in 2022.
Benefits
The first question to ask about buying physical gold is why should you do it in the first place and what benefits does it have for your investment portfolio? Gold certainly had intrinsic value, with high liquidity and portability. It is often used to hedge against inflation and as a safety commodity in times of geopolitical uncertainty/turmoil. While there are plenty of other benefits to investing in precious metals, these are the most likely reasons someone would add it to their portfolio. Diversifying your portfolio with precious metals is also a great idea, so getting into gold, silver, platinum, or palladium should definitely be a consideration.
Sizes and purity
Physical gold comes in different sizes and quantities, and gets measured in a certain way using troy ounces for size and carats. A Troy ounce is 31.1034768 grams, which means a one troy ounce gold bar is going to be larger than a 1 g or 5 g gold bar. Smaller good bars may be minted in one gram, five gram, or even 500 gram pieces. A carat is the proportion of gold contained in a metal alloy. 15K gold has 15/24 parts gold. 18K has 18 parts, and so on until it gets to 24K. Carats indicate how fine the gold is, not its size. Purity also matters when it comes to your investment. .999% and .9999% are the two key purity ratings that apply to gold. .999 means the gold is 99.90% pure while the other purity rating means it’s 99.99% pure. All gold is going to contain some trace of other metals, so the higher the purity the more true gold is available in the piece.
Pricing
Much like every other investment opportunity, there’s a specific pricing structure involved in buying physical gold. When you’re looking for gold, you may notice how much the prices tend to fluctuate. Returns end up being a bit lower than other investments sometimes, but gold has a tendency to rebound significantly when everything else falls, making it an easy choice for a relatively safe investment. Buying good bars is pretty inexpensive, too, with a five gram bar averaging out to be a little over $300 a piece as of 2021.
Where to buy
While there are plenty of options for purchasing gold bars, including brokerage firms, other investors, and mints specializing in gold. One fantastic option is the Arizona-based Scottsdale Mint. As one of the best and most reputable mints, they offer many different gold options, including .9999% pure five oz gold bars. Each bar is certified authentic and a great place to start investing in physical gold. When you’re ready to start buying your 5 gram gold bars, head on over to the Scottsdale Mint here:
You can buy one, two, or even twenty and use your credit card or PayPal to get started. Obtaining gold these days is very easy to start investing in the precious metal, so if you’re looking for somewhere to start you may want to consider a place like the Scottsdale Mint.
Selling and storage
You probably don’t need a vault to store your gold investments, but the fact is that physical gold investment is going to have to be stored safely. Storing it in a personal safe, depository, vault, bank box, or secret location in your home is going to be the safest bet for keeping it secure. You definitely don’t want to bury it in your yard or leave it lying around. When it comes time to sell your gold, you’ll want to find a reputable buyer via the Internet or other avenue. Banks usually do not buy gold (though some central banks do). In some cases, you can sell gold bars back to the mint from which you purchased them. Just check with the mint itself and find out if that is a possibility. Scottsdale Mint does buy back it’s gold bars, but not all mints do. A little bit of research and investigation will help you find the right buyer for your gold when the time comes to sell.