How To Store Gold and Silver

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Gold, silver, and precious metals are some of the best and safest investments going forward over the next 25 years in an era of collapsing currencies, inflation, possibly hyperinflation, increasing governments, and Western collapse. If you’re going to invest in precious metals, you need to know where to store them so they don’t get stolen or lost.

I’ve mentioned this in several videos, and a lot of you guys requested an article about how to store your gold, silver, and other precious metals for this purpose. Today I’ll go over exactly how it works and how to do it.

Misinformation

There’s a lot of confusion about this, and there’s a lot of very damaging, false information making the rounds on the internet as well. It’s very important that you understand this topic, so if this is of interest, make sure you get all the details here because this is not something you want to do wrong.

There are four basic ways you can do this, but one thing I’m not going to cover in this article is how to buy your gold or precious metals. That involves things like non-numismatic coins, and that’s a topic in and of itself. If you’d like an article about how to do that, I might put something together at some point, because there are a lot of different techniques at your disposal. Some methods are better than others, too.

Keep in mind: Some of these storage techniques I recommend, and some I do not. I’m going to cover some methods you won’t want to participate in so you’ll know what you’re looking at when the time comes.

Method 1: Store them in your own home.

If you want to do this, that’s OK as long as you don’t have too much. And I don’t know what “too much” means because it really depends on your income and your risk assessment level. Some guys are paranoid about this, but some are pretty relaxed about it, so it will depend on where you’re at on the topic.

But if you have not-a-lot of gold or silver that you own, you can get a safe and keep it in your house.

Now, a few things about a safe: You need to make sure it has a UL rating of at least 1800. That will protect whatever’s in the safe from fire. Also, if you’re going to include documents or any paper in your safe, you have to make sure it’s waterproof. If your house burns down, the fire trucks are going to blow water all over everything, so you have to make sure you’re protected from both.

I also tend to recommend that people not get electronic safes. I think you should get the old-fashioned combination safe because they have fewer issues since there are no electronic components involved. That’s just my opinion. A lot of electronic safes come with a failsafe in the form of a physical key in case anything happens, but then you have to worry about keys and the security issues that come with them.

Another tip is to bolt the safe to the floor or wall. If that’s not an option for you for any reason, put something extremely heavy on top of the safe like a refrigerator. No thief is going to be able to move your fridge in order to steal your safe.

But if you’ve gotten to the point where you own a lot of gold or silver, you need to look at one of these other options.

Method 2: Store them in someone else’s home.

This would have to be someone you trust, of course, but it involves putting a safe in their house and not giving them the keys or combination. This might be a very close lifelong friend or family member. I’ve known guys who did this: They bought the safe, hid it in someone’s house with their permission, bolted it down, and kept it there. In some cases, they didn’t even tell them what was inside it.

You have to consider things like whether this person lives in a safe area, a gated community, or something similar. But if you store valuables in someone else’s home, burglars won’t get much if they break into your house. It’ll all be somewhere else.

Method 3: Store them in a bank’s safety deposit box.

I do not recommend this. I’m just stating it here because I know you’re going to hear it from other people, and I want you to hear it from me so you know where I stand on it.

We live in a corporatist era in which banks do whatever the government (and other banks) tell them to do. I had an experience many years ago when I fell behind on some bills, and I had a safety deposit box at the time. One of my creditors very easily found out which bank it was, walked in, slapped down a piece of paper, and told the employees to take them to my safety deposit box.

Instead of asking who the fuck they were, the employees took them right into the vault and showed them exactly which safety deposit box was mine. They drilled into the box and took everything out of it like they owned the place. Thank God, I had nothing important in there at the time.

Safety deposit boxes are not safe. Anyone, including your creditors and the IRS, can sue you and take possession of it anytime they want. I never recommend anyone use a safety deposit box anywhere in the Western world.

There are some countries outside the West where safety deposit boxes are probably pretty safe, so there are some exceptions somewhere. But if you live in the Western world, don’t even think about it.

The Western world is in a state of slow collapse. When it finally collapses, one of the first things to go will be the banking system. You’re going to wake up one day, most likely, and there will be a run on your bank of 10,000 people trying to get their money out because everything is collapsing.

If you need something out of your safety deposit box on that day, good fucking luck! You’re going to be fucked, even if no one touches the box.

Please just don’t use them to store your precious metals. I don’t care who tells you otherwise.

Method 4: Use a professional vault service.

This is probably the best and most complicated method for storing your precious metals, and it’s not a bank. This is a big vault/warehouse-type company where they physically store precious metals for you. They do this as a service. There are many vault services outside of the Western world, which is where you’ll want to find one. They’re very safe, very well run, and very private.

When you use one of these services, there are two types of services you can buy into: One is called allocated metals and the other is pooled metals. 

Pooled systems mean you go to this vault, hand them money, and they essentially assign the appropriate amount of gold to you from their stash. If you ever want your money back, they give it back to you based on the current sale price of the gold, silver, or whatever you’ve bought. But there’s no physical gold you particularly own; you just own a percentage of a pool—hence the name.

There’s nothing wrong with doing this. Although it’s not ideal, it is easier, and it’s a lot cheaper.

What’s more expensive (and better, if you can afford it) is allocated storage. You give them, let’s say, $25,000, and they literally put $25,000 worth of gold coins into a bag, label it with your name, and put it in a little locker for you. You can walk into the vault anytime you want, ask for your gold, and they’ll go get it for you. It belongs to you. It’s almost the same thing as having the gold at someone else’s house, but it’s much more secure. The security in these places is incredible.

As I said, it’s more expensive, and it’s more complicated, too; there is some paperwork you’ll have to wade through to get this done, but it might be worth it if you have a lot of gold.

There is a third category called segregated gold. That’s where you bring gold that you own and they put it away in a separate vault. It never touches anyone else’s gold. That’s a third option that frankly costs even more, but it really depends on the kind of service you’re looking for.

If you use a vault service, I strongly recommend, again, that you use one outside the Western world. You will get more privacy and more protection. It’s not smart, in my opinion, to have a big mountain of gold stored inside the United States, given the state of collapse the Western world is experiencing. I realize Switzerland is known for its secure storage, but I’m sorry, it’s part of the collapsing West, and it’s not what it used to be.