Storing your gold and silver bullion at your home can be done in many different ways, but no matter how you decide to store it, keep it hidden at all times and not out in the open. You want to have as many layers as possible between your precious metals stack and the visible world. To be more direct, don’t just buy a safe, put it in your master bedroom and forget about it. Professional thieves love master bedrooms. Buy your safe, put it in a hole in your floor, cover that hole up with a door in the floor, cover the door in the floor up with a rug and then move a huge piece of furniture on top of the rug. You want to strive for multiple layers of invisibility.
When storing your gold and silver at home you’ve got to think out of the box. So where are some good spots to keep your precious metals hidden at home?
First off, in most cases, you should protect your metals by placing them in a plastic casing or pvc tube to keep them untarnished and in good condition. You can get these cases or tubes from your online or local dealer for just a dollar or two each. You can also buy used US Mint “monster boxes” from dealers. These will hold up to 500 coins. If you hide your metals in certain spots, you might need something waterproof as well.
A few of my favorite places to keep my metals hidden in my house besides my floor safe, which I’ll tell you about in a moment, are fake or hollowed out books. I have a huge library and a couple of the books in the library are hollowed out and actually store gold and silver bullion. You’d never think twice if you looked directly at them. You can make one yourself by carving out a hole in the middle of the pages in the book but book safes are the best option in my opinion.
I also store some gold and silver bullion in my freezer! I cleaned out a large container of my least favorite flavor of ice cream and filled the inside with many waterproof, plastic tubes of gold and silver coins. I guess you could add the ice cream back in over your metals if you wanted to be extra stealthy. A couple of my friends have gone even further and have some of their metals frozen in blocks of solid ice stored in a second freezer.
Other fantastic at home hiding places include hollowed out “pet” rocks, the bottom of cat litter boxes, in paint cans with or without the paint in them, a waterproof container buried a few feet down in the ground out in your yard, fake or hollowed out logs in your woodpile, at the bottom of flower pots and in dummy PVC piping in your walls or attic. I have a friend who keeps his metal in a secret compartment under his fireplace.
It may also be wise to have a slightly visible “decoy stash” in your house as a distraction for thieves if you think that many people know you store lots of precious metal at your home. A decoy stash consists of a few pieces of silver bullion in a cheap safe that is out in the open and easy to find.
I wish there was more to it than that but there’s not. Just remember when it comes to hiding your stack at home, use multiple layers of invisibility. Think outside the box or pick one of the options mentioned in this section to hide your metals.
What About A Home Safe?
Eventually, if your precious metals stack gets high enough, a home safe will be a must have. Depending on the amount of gold and silver you store at home, a new safe can cost anywhere from $500 to $100,000, although you could check eBay or Craigslist for a cheaper “used” safe. I paid about $1800 new for my main safe. Keep your safe out of sight. Put it in the floor, put a rug over it and then put a piece of furniture over the rug. Google “floor safes” or “hidden safe” and you’ll find many different ways to hide your safe.
At the very least, get (or make) one of my favorite “book safes” for your first three hundred ounces of precious metal. Book safes will do just fine because one of the last things a burglar probably looks at is your reading material. My book safe actually looks like a big dictionary. When you pull the book cover open, instead of pages, you see a metal locking door with a simple keyhole. Unlock the door, open it and you’ll find a metal compartment that will hold up to three hundred ounces of metal depending on the type. It really is pretty cool. You could simply keep it on your desk and no one would suspect a thing, unless you had a thief who needed to find the meaning of a word for some reason while he was robbing your house. My favorite book safe is located here: http://www.stacksilvergetgold.com/booksafe
When it comes to storing and securing your stack of metals at home, in the end you want to store in multiple locations, stay away from storing metal in your master bedroom, use multiple layers of invisibility and get a good safe eventually.
Really nice post and some excellent tips for hiding precious metals. I like the ice cream container in the freezer as I doubt most thieves would even think to look there.
What if the thief gets hungry while he's doing his burglary
Let's hope he goes to the pantry and not the freezer.