Gold Bullion

If you're interested in investing in gold, you have quite a few options at your disposal.

Gold Bullion Bars

This is the most traditional way to invest and trade in gold. However, there are many pros and cons to choosing gold bullion bars as your investment tool. On one hand, gold bullion bars come with lower premiums than gold bullion coins and other forms of gold. They can be easily bought and sold. However, gold bullion bars carry some risk of forgery because they have less stringent parameters for appearance. For this reason, bars are often analyzed for composition, a process called metallurgical assay. An assayer will test gold bullion bars and coins for fineness and precious metal content. Nonetheless, larger bullion bars have enough volume to make them vulnerable to partial forgeries-where the center of a bullion bar is actually a cavity filled with tungsten. This may or may not be revealed by an assay.

Avoiding scams

It is advisable to buy gold bullion bars recognized and certified by the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) "chain of custody." These bars are easily traded and bought without an assay. However, the second bars are removed from an LBMA recognized vault or stored at home or in a private vault, the bars will need to be re-assayed. The LBMA has a traceable chain of custody that is strictly enforced in order to make assay testing as unnecessary as possible, avoiding the time and expense the assay process often takes. However, even if you choose to buy outside of the LBMA, there are many other methods to ensure you are buying quality gold.

Availability

There are bullion dealers all around the world with great reputations. In some countries you can even buy and sell gold bullion bars at the major banks. Places like Canada, Austria, Argentina, and Switzerland have these systems in place for convenience and ease of use. The bars come in many different sizes. The standard in Europe is the Good Delivery bars that are 400 ounces, or 12 kilograms. Another popular size around the world is 32 ounce (1 kilogram) bars, but they come in many other sizes and measurements-grams, kilograms, tael, and tola.

Gold Bullion Coins

Although there are fake coins out there (usually gold plated lead) gold bullion coins are a common and easy way to own gold. Bullion coins can be easily weighed and measured against known values, making forgery more difficult. This also makes an assay less necessary. They are priced by their weight, plus a premium based on the gold market's supply. The most famous gold bullion coin is the Krugerrand with 46,000,000 ounces in circulation right now. Other notable bullion coins are the Austrian 100 Corona, the Kangaroo (Australian Gold Nugget), the Mexican Gold 50 Peso, and the American Buffalo. No matter which investment vehicle you choose, gold bullion is a great option.