Gold makes wonderful jewelry (56% est.) and dental grills and teeth. Also used in electronics because it doesn't tarnish.

Silver is not as beautiful, but is a lot more useful. It is anti-microbial and has some medicinal value, however its most useful property is that it is the best conductor of electricity known to man. The silver bullion market is actually pretty small, but there is a huge shortage of supply verses industrial demand. It is used extensively in electronics, batteries, and solar cells. The newest, most efficient solar cells use double the silver of the last generation of solar.

Gold's best feature disregarding beauty is its worth/weight ratio A kilo is worth about 67K a Kilo, so you can actually pick up a million bucks. A kilo of silver is only worth about 820 bucks, not very portable.

However you probably aren't going to barter for groceries with a 2,100 gold bar. 1 oz Silver rounds are typically the sweet spot for silver because the premium discount for larger bars is very small. Also fractional silver (And gold) have a much higher premium.

You can also buy junk silver (Excessively worn coins 10 cents, 25 cents, 50 cents dated 1964 or older are 90% silver and a 1.40 face value in any combination makes for 1 oz of silver and 1/10th of whatever its mixed with. However junk silver often has a higher premium than silver rounds and look crappier. I stacked silver rounds thinking that a merchant will make change with the junk silver because you want the most weight for your money.

Silver and gold are pretty much fire proof as well. Even melted it will be worth close to the same amount as the bar, coin, or round.

Sovereign Coins (Minted by government mints) tend to be expensive compared to rounds or bars, and may trade for more than spot price whereas generic will trade a lot closer to spot. However getting an extra dollar or 2 over spot when you paid many dollars more over spot to buy it seems unworthwhile to me. In my view, in a barter situation an ounce is an ounce regardless of type of bullion.

Palladium, Platinum, and etc... are a lot more risky. Both have been used in catalytic converters with Palladium being the most in vogue.

Note: Most silver and a lot of gold comes from mines as a byproduct of other ores. Currently silver costs about 11 bucks an ounce to mine, but should silver's price explode, more just silver mines will start up and therefore the production costs will be hirer.

Mexico is the largest silver producer and between the cartels, environmentalists, and some disgruntlement with the USA production is down.

China is the largest producer of gold, and 2nd largest producer of silver, albeit its only about half of Mexico's

Cds interest rates are well below inflation, bonds when the government going broke? Real Estate thats far over priced and not selling well? After stocking up on weapons and food, gold and/or silver seems like a good idea to me.