Tips For Entering The Gold Coin Market

If you are considering buying and selling gold, then you are probably going to want to start with gold coins. Entering the gold coin market can be a pretty tough experience, especially since you stand to lose quite a bit of money if you make a wrong decision. To help you get the most bang for your buck, here are a couple of things that you should think about before committing to the market:

Understand the Timeline

If you are thinking about approaching gold coins just like you might approach stocks, then you might have some misconceptions. For starters, you can't expect to buy and sell gold coins for frequent turnarounds.

Gold coins are long term investment options and should be treated as such. The value of gold tends to move much slower than stock values. This ultimately means that you aren't going to see some massive return on your initial investment within a few days, weeks, months, or sometimes even years. In order to actually make a profit, you will need to wait until the price of gold has risen substantially, which might take anywhere from a couple of years to decades.

Focus Your Sights

When looking at gold coins, you might be tempted by the huge amount of variety available. In addition to the several denominations of various sizes minted by each of dozens of countries, there are also limited edition and collector's coins that can sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars. You might be considering tracking down some of those coins. In many cases, it is a much better idea to narrow your sights down to a single, common coin.

When looking for rare coins, it can easy to misled by similar-looking coins. You'll need to hire an expert to determine the authenticity of any coins that you do find. In the end, this can add up to a huge amount of time and money spent verifying something that might end up being worth very little.

On the other hand, common coins, such as the 1 oz American Gold Eagle, are much easier to identify. Essentially every professional gold coin dealer will be able to easily identify an American Gold Eagle. With a little bit of practice, you can do the same. On top of that, 1 oz coins tend to be more valuable than fractional coins (1/2 oz, 1/4 oz, etc). These fractional coins have a higher markup than 1 oz units.

For more information about buying, selling, and gold coin values, contact a local coin dealer.