Storing Your Gold

You have done your homework. You have met with a professional gold broker. You have bought gold coins. Now what do you do with them?

The majority of investors take possession of their gold and make their own storage arrangements. Below are some of the of the most popular choices.

Bank Safety Deposit Box: Gold can be kept in a safety deposit box at your bank. This option is one of the most common that gold investors choose. The downside of safety deposit boxes is that items are not insured against fire, flood, robbery, or similar disasters. Another possible problem is, if the bank closes during a bank holiday, you might not be able to get to your gold when you need it most. The solution to this problem is to store some of it at home and the bulk in the bank safety deposit box. Even though this particular storage solution has some drawbacks, as many other options do, it is believed to be one of the safest and most practical for the vast majority of gold owners.

Personal Safe: Another option that you can have is to keep your gold in your house or in your office in your personal safe. Be careful when taking this option. A floor safe is recommended because it is difficult to crack and easy to hide. A freestanding safe is also possible to have. Insurance companies, however, usually rate floor safes higher than freestanding safes. If you are thinking about keeping your gold at home, it is a good idea to consult with a bonded safe company on all the options that there are. You may also want to consider talking about this matter with your insurance agent before you buy the safe. Your insurance company may offer coverage on your homeowner’s policy. Some of them will cover gold and yet others won’t.

Another option is burying your gold on your property which is commonly known as “midnight gardening.” There are storage canisters available that do not corrode when buried. If you are considering midnight gardening, remember the story of the man who bought a respectable amount of gold and buried it in his backyard. He sold his house a few years later but forgot about his gold that was buried. He had to make a commando raid i his old backyard in the early hours of the morning to get his gold back. There have also been cases of widows and children of the deceased who were never able to find the buried gold.

In my career as a gold broker, I have had some very unusual calls about hidden gold. One case was that of a woman who called to mention that she had reviewed several invoices for gold purchased by her father who had passed away from my gold firm. Her mother had passed away too, the man had not told his daughter about where he had hidden the gold before he passed away. She was hoping that her father might have told me where it had been kept, but to her misfortune, he hadn’t told me anything.

In another case, a desperate wife, whose husband had not been the client of this firm, call and asked me if I had any idea of a general place where somebody might hide gold. Her husband had bought a large amount of gold and had hidden it. He had suffered a stroke that paralyzed him and left him unable to speak. He could not tell her where the gold was hidden.

Midnight gardening will always be the chosen option for many gold owners although fraught with peril. Approach it with due diligence and care. Be sure to always leave instructions which can easily be found by your children as to where your gold is hidden, or tell your loved ones where you have hidden it in case of any incidents that you might not expect to happen.