Paper Gold vs. Physical Gold: What’s the Difference?
Hailed as the ultimate investment to protect against inflation, deflation, and currency devaluation, gold has been the top choice for investors throughout history. Because the gold market is highly liquid, there are many ways in which you can get your hands on the yellow metal.
Physical gold, which includes gold bars and bullions and paper gold, including exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and gold certificates issued by banks and mints, are two of the primary ways in which you can invest in gold. In this blog, we’ll expand on the dissimilarities between the two:
Purchase
The most fundamental difference between paper gold and physical gold is that the later provides the most direct exposure to gold. You can buy gold coins, bars, and bullions from government and private mints, jewelers, and precious metal dealers.
However, do your research before purchasing various sellers may be offering the same gold for different prices. For the best prices and top-quality gold, visit Orion Metal Exchange’s website.
Unlike physical gold, you can buy paper gold like shares on the stock market. Forms of paper gold, such as ETFs and IRAs, can allow you to keep gold without the inconvenience of storage costs and markups.
There are more than a dozen ways to invest money in ETFs today. Some of these include iShares Gold Trust (IAU), UBS ETRACS CMCI Gold Total Return ETN (UBG), Aberdeen Standard Gold ETF Trust (SGOL) and GraniteShares Gold Trust (BAR) among others.
Risks
While the cost of the precious metal rarely ever jumps too high or steeps too low, you can rest assured that your physical gold will perform its role of providing a hedge against inflation very well. But the risks of storing physical gold are also high.
Make sure that you use a top-quality secure vault to store all your gold coins and bullions.
On the other hand, while security dangers aren’t too high with paper gold, but unique risks, including special considerations paid to taxation, may arise with the type of ETF you hold.
Liquidity
Once you buy physical gold, it’s all yours. Wherever you are in the world, you can sell it for its cash value and use it however you like. But ETFs don’t work like that.
They are irredeemable shares that you can’t sell for money. Hence, for investors looking for more liquid assets, gold coins and bullions are a far better choice than ETFs.
Make your investment portfolio more impressive with the jaw-dropping collection of gold and silver coins from Orion Metal Exchange. We can also recommend a safe and reliable vault storage service to keep your precious metals safe in the US and abroad.
