You can buy gold bullion in the form of bars or coins. If you choose to purchase gold coins, they have a chance to appreciate in price over the amount of gold that is contained within them. Gold bars do not do this. If you are obtaining the gold for investment purposes, this is a very expensive way of holding gold.
If you obtain a large quantity of it, you will need to store the gold in a special storage facility. There will be both insurance and storage fees associated with this type of arrangement. If you are only buying a small amount of it, the safest and least expensive place to store it is in a safe deposit box at a bank.
Under no circumstances should the gold be stored in your home. If you do, sooner or later the wrong person will come to know this, and your house will become a prime burglary target.
There are many different ways you can go about buying gold bullion. Almost like everything else now a days, it can be acquired over the internet. In fact, if you do your homework and shop around for a while, this is probably the least expensive way to purchase it.
The first thing you are going to need to do is to decide if you are going to invest in gold bars or gold coins. There are far more dealers that you can purchase the coins from. In fact, you can even buy them from people that sell them on auction websites like eBay.
Gold bullion can also be obtained from local gold retail outlets, if your city is large enough to have them. When you buy gold in this manner, it should be considered a long term investment and not a short term proposition. Physically taking control of gold, is more expensive than buying contracts for it, which is normally done when the investor is looking for short term profits.