Does Buying Bullion Mean the Same Thing as Buying Gold Coins?
This is a very common question that gets asked everyday, and it is a tricky one to answer, because the answer is yes and no.
Bullion is gold that tracks along with the spot price of gold. It can come in coin form like American Eagles, South African Krugerands or Chinese Pandas to name a few. So the answer here is yes, bullion can be bought in coin form. Bullion can also come in bars or ingots in various sizes.
Here is where it gets tricky, because buying bullion isn’t necessarily the same as buying gold coins. Buying gold coins would most commonly be buying numismatic gold, also called U.S. rare coins. This type of gold has different benefits and should be used as a different part of your gold portfolio strategy. Numismatic gold can be bought in bars (very rare) but it mainly comes in coin form, therefore buying gold coins would be associated mainly with buying numismatics.
So you can see if you were going to buy gold you would need to be very specific with what you want to acquire. You can buy bullion coins or you can buy numismatic coins. Do your research first to determine which is going to be the best fit for you. Bullion is considered to be confiscatable, and reportable in some instances. Whereas numismatic coins are considered to be non-confiscatable and non-reportable but will cost you more as they are more valuable. However, the cost can be well worth it as time has shown that numismatics tend to outperform bullion gold.
We believe that everyone deserves a properly developed strategy for financial safety.
Lynette Zang
Chief Market Analyst, ITM Trading