Gold Investing - Fractional Gold Coins and You

No other metal can match the beauty of gold. And no other coin can match the beauty of a gold coin. Yes, coins such as the Silver Eagle and Silver Maple Leaf are pleasing to look at and they are much more affordable than gold coins at current spot prices. But (in my humble opinion) when you compare them with their gold versions or side-by-side with a 24k Gold Buffalo or Austrian Philharmonic, they pale in comparison.

So how can you invest in gold on a silver budget? The answer may well be with fractional gold coins. That is, those gold coins containing less than an ounce of gold. The most popular gold bullion coins (the Gold Eagle, Gold Maple Leaf and Krugerrand) all come in half-ounce, quarter-ounce and tenth-ounce sizes. Let's take a look at the Gold American Eagle...

The Gold American Eagle first appeared in October of 1986. In that year, a total of 1,312,500 one-ounce Eagles were produced. But fractional Gold Eagles had good numbers too. Half-ounce Gold Eagles for 1986 numbered 486,500, quarter-ounce 587,000 and tenth-ounce 852,500. The most affordable Gold Eagle, the tenth-ounce, can be purchased for under $190.00 (at the time of this post with spot gold about $1545.00). There are approximately 11,249,000 tenth-ounce Gold Eagles in existance (1986 thru 2010).

The one drawback to the tenth-ounce gold coins is they are pretty small. You may want to concentrate on coins that are closer to quarter-ounce (or larger). The quarter-ounce Gold Eagle can be purchased for under $440, about the price of a 10 oz silver bar (good luck finding these now), and about 3,218,800 are floating around. I have included a picture of a quarter-ounce Gold Maple Leaf (same approximate size as a quarter-ounce Gold Eagle) to give you an idea of the size of this gold coin compared to a U.S. silver dime.

There are several other fractional gold coins in existance that contain varying amounts of gold content such as the British Sovereign (.2354 gold content), French Twenty Franc "Rooster" (.1867 gold content), Mexican Gold Ten Pesos (.2411 gold content), etc. You can see many more examples in my article Fractional Gold Coins.

Thanks for reading.