physical gold is available at local coin shops – I like Cellar Coin in PB
paper gold comes in numerous forms – in an equity account you can buy GLD (an ETF) and CEF (holder of physical gold and silver) – in a futures account you can purchase contracts and options on contracts
gold confiscation:
from what I have read, only one person was prosecuted for not turning in their gold in the 30’s and that person was holding their gold in a visible manner and being very vocal about not turning it in (in China there is a saying about the nail that sticks its head up getting hit with a hammer) – IMO people are far less compliant today than they were in the 30’s – I think an order to turn in gold would be roundly ignored by the American population
from a more practical perspective, if the govt decided that they needed gold so badly that they had to outlaw / confiscate it, they would start with the ETF, GLD, which (supposedly) holds more physical gold than the Swiss (GLD is the 6th largest holder of physical gold in the world I believe with the Swiss at #7) – hard to imagine sending jack-booted soldiers on a door-to-door search for a few gold Krugerrands when GLD has over 1000 tons of gold sitting in just a few locations
I expect that what MIGHT happen would be along the lines of the govt telling us that the ‘terrorists’ are using precious metals as a way to finance their operations and therefore, all markets dealing in precious metals will be closed and all transactions involving precious metals will be made illegal – we might wake up some monday and find that all of the coin shops have been closed and the only legal buyer of physical gold would be the local bank or govt clearing house – wouldn’t have to make the possession of gold illegal just set it up so the only legal way to sell gold was to the govt at a price specified by the govt – no gold would be available for purchase – similarly, in the equity and futures markets positions could only be liquidated
I’m hoping that we don’t get to this point (illegal to transact in gold) but gold is the only competition that fiat currencies have and the people who control fiat currencies aren’t going to sit idly by while gold soars to the heights that some people are predicting ($5-10,000/ounce) – on the other hand, making something illegal increases its value on the black market …
