Precious Metals Quotes

Common bullion coins are easy to sell because they’re instantly recognized and accepted. [2004] - James Turk

If you hire a company to store your gold, it should be allocated. When you store on an allocated basis, you continue to own the gold. You pay an annual storage fee of one or two percent of your gold’s value. [2004] - James Turk

Mining shares tend to appreciate even faster than gold itself and have rarity value (like gold itself). Newmont Mining is the largest gold miner in the world and the only gold miner in the S&P 500. [2004] - James Turk

U.S. and Canadian mining stocks tend to trade at higher multiples of earnings, cash flow, and reserves than do South African or Latin American miners. [2004] - James Turk

Things to understand about precious-medals mutual funds: (1) The ideal fund is big enough to be stable and small enough to be nimble. (2) Look not just at a fund’s three- or five-year returns, but its results during the current manager’s tenure. (3) Management fees range from a reasonable .7 percent to over 3 percent, with an average of around 2 percent. (4) Be suspicious of high-turnover funds. [2004] - James Turk

Comex is the world’s major silver-trading exchange. [2004] - James Turk

Platinum and palladium bullion is available from the same dealers who carry gold and silver, though the selection is considerably less broad. Platinum Eagle coins come in sizes ranging from 1⁄10 ounce to one ounce, while palladium is primarily available in one-ounce bars. Because these are low-volume items, they tend to have higher markups than gold and silver coins. And they’re not as recognizable as gold and silver, making them considerably harder to sell. [2004] - James Turk

Most rare coin aficionados turn to sources like the RedBook, an annual listing of the market price of virtually every major coin, or the Web sites of PCGS and NGC, which offer background material and continuously updated pricing information.  [2004] - James Turk

Membership in the Professional Numismatist Guild (PNG), the only major numismatic organization that doesn’t admit everyone who applies, is a big plus when choosing a rare-coin dealer. [2004] - James Turk

The more conservative you are, the more gold you should own. If preservation of capital is the goal, then you should own physical gold for liquidity, along with investments in the shares of unhedged majors and/or the mutual funds that own them. More-aggressive investors can hold mining stocks with greater leverage, along with silver, foreign bond funds, and mutual funds specializing in U.S.-based resource and manufacturing companies. And the most adventurous should focus on smaller miners, the shares of U.S.-based manufacturers, gold-based derivatives, and short positions in financial stocks. [2004] - James Turk

Spread your assets among several nations, in several forms. Own physical gold and put it beyond the government’s reach. Buy the shares of mining stocks with reserves in relatively safe parts of the world. Convert some cash into digital gold, stored in a non-U.S. vault. Open Canadian, Swiss, German, or Japanese bank and brokerage accounts.  [2004] - James Turk