The attempts to get you to buy gold are off the charts! EVERY "conservative" TV and radio station has a different gold company running the ads, with the hosts claiming "X is the only company I trust". It seems like whenever there is a huge push for something like this, it is all part of a behind-the-scenes plan to rip off the average joe. My feeling is that if the SHTF and the economy collapses, what good will $100,000 in some gold company stock/fund do you? Is anyone else going to buy your $5,000 /oz gold? My theory is that this huge gold push is to drive the price of gold up to a point where the big boys DO sell out, make a killing, and leave everyone else scrambling to get out before it drops below what they bought in for. Please post your thoughts on this. Thank you.
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Gold and other precious metals are not an investment, it's just more of an inflation-proof money store (not guaranteed, but historically has been the case). I personally stay away from only gold/silver stocks/funds, because the are heavily manipulated, just stick with physical in your hand metals. You see these ads because the audience is interested, and everyone want's a piece of that pie. If you want to get into stacking silver/gold I'd suggest:
Most people don't know that tungsten (less than $20/ounce) is essentially the same density as gold, meaning that unless you drilled into a gold item, you would not know if it is just gold covered tungsten. I suppose someone really familiar with gold could tell by the "ring" it makes, but I don't know. I bet there are a lot of such fakes out in the world right now.
Yeah the bigger shops have XRF machines to verify them, that would tell right away if someone was using gold clad tungsten. (The machines are really expensive though, so not feasible to get one yourself)
A very small drill bit will tell you. (so the hole doesn't remove much gold :) ) Perhaps even a sharp pin would work (but I've never held a 24 carat gold bar to know if it is so soft you can poke a pin into it)
You could dent it with a pin and enough force, but it's still pretty strong.
Some bars/coins are now coming with embedded "mintid" chips in them to scan and verify, the more affordable solution is to pick up a "Sigma Metalytics Precious Metal Verifier" that measures conductivity and can tell the purity and if any metals are mixed in, but those run around $750-1000. Best bet is to buy from bigger operations that have XRF machines (which can run up to $20-30k). Which if you are their customer, most shops will let you use the scanner to verify things you already own, but don't expect them to let you use it so you can buy from some random guy in their own store.