>>268923
>I always feel like I'm getting a bad deal when I pay a large amount of money for gold when just 6 years ago it was a lot less. Same with silver.
That's probably because of your mindset. Gold and silver is a lot more than just a dollar sign and shiny metals. They are a universal asset. Their value never actually changes. The American Double Eagle coin minted in 1849 is worth the same today as it was back then. <But how can that be when same coin is now "worth" $2840?
Because our currency is devalued. Ever since the U.S. dollar became a fiat currency, hard unchangeable assets like precious metals, real estate, and even stocks have sky rocketed in "value". Not because the assets changed, but because the value of measurement changed.
Now you bring up the "risk" of the price of gold and silver crashing overnight because of some hypothetical scenario. But the reality is that said scenario is exactly the reason why you're buying them. It has happened repeatedly throughout history, where a society establishes itself on precious metals, the government becomes greedy overtime, so the government eventually ditches the precious metals for something more "convenient" that can be produced on demand, the precious metals skyrocket in "price" even though nothing about them has actually changed, then the government's fiat currency collapses because people don't trust it. After which they either replace it with a new fiat or go back to precious metals until they prove to be "too restrictive" and start the cycle all over again. To put it simply, the gold and silver never change.
Now despite these arguments, you may still be hesitant because you're just looking at the price and wondering if it's really "worth it". If that's the case, then all you need to do is look at where things have gone. Twenty five years ago, gold was $300, now it's $3k, and it will probably rise to $30k by the time we reach 2050. So understanding this to be the case, it's probably better to buy gold and silver today when it's $3k as opposed to tomorrow when it's going to be even higher in price.
However despite this being the case, there is one drawback that I can think of and one that I don't personally know how to solve. What happens when the price DOES fall? The first thing I can think of is educating yourself about how the options market works because the purpose behind options is to basically "insure" your asset so that you don't lose money when the price falls. Another thing I can think of is try to find some other way to receive a "payout". I also participate in buying stocks, however the only stocks I buy are ones that give out dividends so that my wealth isn't tied to an asset as I'm receiving money from the company regardless if their stock price goes up or down. As I said, I do not know if there's any similar structure when it comes to precious metals, so that's something that you would have to educate yourself about.