The size of $500 worth of gold - about 3.5g - is a small coin or a thin gold ring.
(Thinking of it, it’s actually funny that we’re back to the times of being able to buy a house with a bag of gold coins)
Regular people definitelly buy gold in physical form because it’s such a concentrated form of storing wealth, though in the West this was a lot more common in the old days and currently is a lot more common in countries like China and India.
Oh, and if you buy gold certificates and the certificate issuer goes bankrupt (like so many companies go during Economic Crashes and Depressions), then in the eyes of the law that gold is not yours and you’re just another creditor of the assets of that company, so forget all about getting most of the value of that gold back: you might want to reconsider gold certificates for value safe-keeping outside of the dollar in case of a major economic crash in the US since if the gold isn’t actually in a legal structure were you own it (i.e. you legally have direct ownership of a chunk of gold and pay somebody to store it or store it yourself), you remain totally exposed to whatever economic upheavals happen where that company is based.
The size of $500 worth of gold - about 3.5g - is a small coin or a thin gold ring.
(Thinking of it, it’s actually funny that we’re back to the times of being able to buy a house with a bag of gold coins)
Regular people definitelly buy gold in physical form because it’s such a concentrated form of storing wealth, though in the West this was a lot more common in the old days and currently is a lot more common in countries like China and India.
Oh, and if you buy gold certificates and the certificate issuer goes bankrupt (like so many companies go during Economic Crashes and Depressions), then in the eyes of the law that gold is not yours and you’re just another creditor of the assets of that company, so forget all about getting most of the value of that gold back: you might want to reconsider gold certificates for value safe-keeping outside of the dollar in case of a major economic crash in the US since if the gold isn’t actually in a legal structure were you own it (i.e. you legally have direct ownership of a chunk of gold and pay somebody to store it or store it yourself), you remain totally exposed to whatever economic upheavals happen where that company is based.