Getting into metals

[redman2006]

I am curious if those that have experience in buying and selling metals could step in and offer a primer.

My personal questions:

Who do you buy from? How? How do you take delivery?

Would you consider moving money from a traditional 401k to metals right now and why?

When the time comes, how do you sell it? How would you know you got a good price?

If you needed or wanted to use it in a collapse scenario, or accept it in a collapse scenario, how would you do so and how would you prevent yourself from being taken by scams, plated coins etc that might look like the real thing but are not or maybe they are but have been shaved etc?

[0utlaw]

I stay almost exclusively in US junk silver coins they are nearly impossible to fake. Unfortunately right now is what we call a sucker's market, 401Ks are low and silver is high, exactly opposite of what you want. I but most of my coins through JM bullion on line and have it shipped to me, they insure all their orders. I'm a hoarder so i rarely sell but JM will buy from you or what little I have sold has been locally. You can usually get a better price selling to an individual than a store or broker.

[redman2006]

I was talked out of this some time ago and now I am wishing that I had moved a portion into metals. I know it is a sucker's market, but I wonder if I need to do something to conserve what I have in my 401k before things really drop, if they do. Cash is one option, but that does nothing to protect against inflation.

Another question, and I am not asking for your stash location, but how do you protect it? A safe at home, hiding it, bank safe deposit box, or something else? Fire and theft worry me as well.

[0utlaw]

Some is in the gun safe, and in the interest of not putting all of my eggs in the proverbial one basket we have some stored in alternate locations. We opted against a safety deposit box because having to ask someone else to access my stuff sounded like a bad idea. If you move out of your 401K do not get paper metals or futures they're as prone to evaporation as stocks. It was hard for me to get started because everytime the market was low on silver everything was great so it was easy to ignore, then things would go to crap and I'd put it off waiting for it to come back down...rinse repeat several times and I finally just dove in. Even now I only hold between 10 and 15 percent of my savings in silver, and just a smattering of gold, mostly because I have to fork out so much at once for gold and I can buy small amounts of silver regularly.

[redman2006]

Thank you for the input. The gun safe is an obvious target to me, and I was concerned about using it.

[0utlaw]

My biggest plus and biggest minus for my security is my remote location, nobody is just going to wander by but if they're here they have all the privacy they need to take their time and force their way into the safe. We have put it out of ordinary view but it's not exactly hidden either.