Silver yesterday, today gold

Yesterday I wrote about silver. Today I will turn my attention to gold.

I had an email.

The sender said he had a telephone call from a major company offering to sell him MS-63 Liberty Head gold $20s.

He gave me the quoted price.

He asked me what I thought.

The first thing I think of is that if you would like to invest in gold, you should contact a reputable firm.

You should never respond to a cold call from a firm you have not done business with. That can become problematic.

It is better that you do research and ask questions like what does the premium over basic bullion value work out to and how does this compare to historical norms?

If the coins are being marketed as metal plays, the question becomes why not just buy bullion coins like American Eagles with the lowest possible premiums to gain the highest amount of gold for each dollar you spend?

The sender did not mention this, and perhaps it was not mentioned to him, but from time to time I have seen promoters say that you should buy gold in the form of pre-1933 dated coins because they were not recalled by the 1933 Gold Recall Order.

The implication is that something that successfully evaded recall once would do so a second time if such a recall happened again.

This is a might thin reed on which to base investment decisions in gold.

To make a long story short, if you are a collector, by all means by slabbed Liberty Head gold $20s. If you are an investor, make sure they are the appropriate vehicle for your purposes.

Then place the call to a firm of your own choosing.

That’s my advice.

Buzz blogger Dave Harper is winner of the 2013 Numismatic Literary Guild Award for Best Blog and is editor of the weekly newspaper "Numismatic News."