Hi fellow Steemers!

This is a question I had asked myself when before I began stacking physical gold and silver, and tried to carry out as much research as I could to see what financial benefits there were; and how to avoid any possible pitfalls. This article is meant just as a brief introduction to both metals, and various educational resources to help give you a deeper understanding if you are wanting to learn more.

Specifically, gold itself has been defined in numerous ways such as: an investment vehicle, insurance, money, and so on. Also it comes in various forms of the following: coins (circulated and uncirculated), and bars. Also, it has been cited as having a strong historical precedent (over 5,000 years) of use as a standard of value, while other fiat currencies (faith-based, usually paper) have come and gone. Here is a following article from a dependable investment education site, Investopedia, to learn more on why owning gold might be a wise investment choice for you:

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/basics/08/reasons-to-own-gold.asp

The other famous precious metal used for investment and/or hedge purposes is silver. Unlike gold, silver is not only used as a commodity, but as an industrial metal that helps to create a vast array of modern products from LED chips to photovoltaics in solar panels:

https://www.bullionvault.com/guide/gold/Silver-industrial-demand

From a personal observation, I have gone to a wide variety of coin shops and they stated they felt silver was a better investment, due to the cheaper price, and potential to rise, (nothing against gold, of course).

Personally, and as an example, the majority of my precious metals stack is made up of silver (due to the price), which would be around 100 oz. of US Silver Eagle coins (uncirculated), and about 25 grams (of 1 gram bars) of .9999 Swiss gold bars; and I'll continue to add a little bit here and there in the near future. One thing I do want to stress though is that I have other investments in the stock market, collectibles, and cryptocurrency (Bitcoin and Either, for now). I am not precious metals heavy, and your mileage may vary based on your personal financial situation and investment strategy.

Investment Side Note:

Diversify, diversify, diversify.

If you have the financial resources, diversification is a key pillar of investing in anything under the sun, including precious metals, and for the sake of risk management, so you can attempt to increase your gains, and decrease your risk of losses.

If you would like to learn more about silver and gold here is an excellent video discussion post from Ken Schortgen (The Daily Economist Channel) where he gives an overview of both metals from his educated financial perspective:

https://youtu.be/LmDg-zV4-v8

Disclaimer: I, (king-leonidas), am not an investment guru, please do not sell off your assets because you're going to be rich overnight from buying precious metals (kidding here), and my post on this subject is only meant to assist others in learning more so that they may make better financial decisions; thus, have greater potential to grow their own wealth. Also, I am not getting paid to promote anyone's website and/or post.

Please feel free to share your own perspectives and/or resources on this matter, the more the merrier.