You can invest in precious metals in several ways: 

- Tangible precious metals: coins or bars (as in gold bars, or bullion) 
- Certificates 
- Precious metal mutual funds 
- Precious metal futures 
- Stock in metals mining companies

All of these options have advantages, depending upon your investment goals: 

- Tangible precious metals offer safety and security. 
- Certificates are easy to store and do not take up space. 
- Mutual funds allow an experienced individual to make strategic decisions and offer diversity. You are able to spread your risk within the mutual fund holdings. Mutual funds may be the best and most conservative choice for a beginner in the precious metals realm. 

- Futures investing offers a good potential for high risk and high reward but also a good potential for loss. You will do best with futures if you are confident that you can accurately predict the trends in values of precious metals.

Precious metals investments can perform with volatility. Experts may recommend that your portfolio contain a relatively small percentage, 10% or less of the total, in precious metals.

Precious metals are limited in how they appreciate – they only increase in value if their price per ounce increases. Stocks and bonds offer investors dividends.

If you are interested in investing in precious metals, take the time to educate yourself about them. The following are some helpful sources: 

- http://www.pngdealers/com locates coin dealers and also addresses some of the details in learning about coin collecting.  
- http://www.money.org offers additional information about coin collecting and valuation.  
- http://www.ebullionguide.com offers a complete guide to precious metals investing. 
- http://www.preciousmetalinvestment.com/investment-vehicles/mutual-funds/precious-metal-mutual-funds/ has an article on precious metal mutual funds, and includes a list of U.S. gold funds.