Bullion Direct has been online for ten years. They offer a trading platform for precious metals including gold, silver, platinum and palladium. You can trade gold bullion or gold coins such as the American Eagle or the South African Krugerrand. Coins are easy to store and come in different weights which make them affordable to more people. Trading on Bullion Direct is anonymous so you do not know who you are buying from. Only Bullion Direct knows who the two parties are similar to stock trading with online brokerages.

You can find a Bullion Direct review at http://inflation.us/reviews/bulliondirect.html. What I liked about that one is that they actually tried their service. Bullion Direct also has an online forum which they claim not to white wash. Since I was able to find an inflammatory posting on there claiming Bullion Direct fraud, I tend to believe them. In my experience, checking reviews by actual customers is the best way to find out if it is the kind of company you would like to do business with.

Checking the Better Business Bureau website at www.bbb.org led me to discover that Bullion Direct has a BBB rating of A with A+ being the highest possible. The BBB has been keeping track of this company for the last ten years and has only a minimal number of Bullion Direct complaints listed. All of the complaints were resolved. Bullion Direct advertises heavily and I was not able to discover a Bullion Direct scam.

Since silver is considerably cheaper than gold, you can buy a 1 ounce silver bullion bar which is .999 pure for less than $20. Prices change in real time and orders are also executed in real time using Bullion Direct’s Nucleo exchange. The only thing that won’t happen in real time is shipping the product. That part of their service seems to be on the slow end. With the volatility in the markets many people have added gold investments to their portfolio. Bullion Direct seems like a reasonable place to consider purchasing coins or bullion if you want to be able to hold your investments in your hand.

Personally, I am still debating whether having physical possession of an asset is a good thing. There are obvious benefits to actually knowing you can go down to your secret hiding place and have an emergency stash of assets but what if a natural disaster strikes and your emergency stash is wiped out? What if your emergency hiding place gets discovered and robbed? Security is a tricky thing. Just look at the debates this country has had for nearly ten years now about airline security. Have we actually made any progress? Being a frequent traveler, I can’t say that I feel any safer traveling now than I did then. Do I still travel? Of course.

Should you diversify your investments. Of course. How you do that is still up to you. You have to know what makes you feel the most secure. Is it owning gold bullion? Is it having a large sum of money in a FDIC insured savings account? Do you want to have some of it all? Perhaps you are a numismatist and want to combine your financial security with your love of coin collecting. Why not? The American Gold Eagle coin is quite beautiful as is the Chinese Gold Panda. I am not as fond of the South African Krugerrand but then I am not as fond of images of people as I am of animals. Personal preference.

Investing is a highly personal choice. You have to know your own propensity for risk as balanced towards your need for security. Is Bullion Direct the right company for you to deal with? Your call.