![Don't store your gold in obvious places. [photo: apartmenttherapy.com]](http://www.getmoneyenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/bedwithhiddenstorage.jpg "Don't store your gold in obvious places. [photo: apartmenttherapy.com]")
You might have some places around the house where you keep some extra cash “just in case,” but these places may not work equally well for storing and hiding your gold. Besides, there may be good reasons for not storing your gold in just the same place you store your cash. “Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket,” as they say.
For gold bugs and other gold investors who have decided it’s time to buy gold, and you want to buy gold bullion, you will need to come up with a gold storage plan of some sort: have it insured and stored at the dealer, or store it yourself. If you’re storing it yourself, here are some ideas for keeping it hidden.
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Although you obviously want to keep it hidden, you also need to make sure (1) you can find it again yourself, that (2) you won’t accidentally lose it/throw it out, and (3) you can access it quickly when you need it.
You also want to avoid storing gold in places that are well-known as storage places for valuables. This means avoiding keeping it behind paintings, in dresser drawers, under your bed, with other valuables, or any other commonly known places for hiding things.
And unless you are merely buying gold for investment purposes, you probably should not store your gold in a bank’s safety deposit box. If all you want to do is speculate on gold prices, it’s much easier to do this through gold ETFs or gold stocks rather than taking delivery and storage of gold.
If you’re buying physical bullion you are probably concerned about monetary stability, safety and general emergency-preparation and wealth protection. Most people who end up buying physical gold want it for the tangible, hard asset qualities it possesses as a store of real value. If this is the case a bank’s safety deposit box might be useless to you if (1) there is a “bank holiday”, (2) your bank is broken into, or (3) you are out of town (away from your bank) WTSHTF.
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Ten Ideas For Hiding Your Gold In Your Home, Car and Offsite
Gold Inside False Pipes, Tubes and Doors
From false cabinet fronts and false vents to the space inside lamp stands that you screw together yourself, or beneath false floors or in false plumbing, you can use the power of trompe l’oeil to keep small amounts of gold hidden. I particularly like the lamp stand idea. If you buy one of those lamps-in-a-box that you have to screw together yourself, you can store items inside. Even if the lamp is knocked over in a break-in scenario, your gold will not move or fall out if you have properly secured it. And who is going to steal a floor lamp?
Gold Mixed in with Bags of Marbles, Junk
If you’ve got kids’ toys or marbles sets, you can store gold coins in such a bag. It’s not pretty, and your coins will get dusty and scuffed, but this will not affect the value of the actual gold, which is determined by its karats, not what the coin looks like. Place them in an opaque bag that is obviously for marbles or other bulk junk with similar weight and bulk to gold coins. The downside is that if someone was rifling through your things, they would be able to feel the coins – or more likely, they would just dumb the bag out. But if you keep it with your kids’ things, it seems less attractive. But would you feel safe keeping your gold with your kids’ toys?
Prêt-à-porter: Gold in Suitcases, Briefcases, Backpacks
This is a great one – your gold is ready when you are. You can make a false backing in your briefcase, or keep them sewed into your backpack. Downside: the fact that you’d be carrying them around all day, or that you could lose your backpack/ have it stolen. Alternatively, you could keep the gold in a briefcase which you keep at home, or in your “bug-out bag” which is sitting around just for that purpose, anyway.
Disposables: Keep Gold With Toiletries, Food
This is another great idea, which others have mentioned for storing cash, too – hide your gold in a false can of beans by emptying out the can (through the bottom) and placing it inside. Keep the weight the same as the other cans and don’t let it rattle. You can also store gold in similarly disposable contexts alongside toilet paper stores, in kleenex boxes, and even in the freezer in a package that looks like meat. The cold won’t harm gold at all.
Gold Between Pages of Books, Bookends
Don’t keep gold in DVD or CD cases – those are the easy targets for theft. But who steals books? Bookends might be an even better idea for storage. You could specifically design them yourself, too, to hold valuables. Gold coins can lie flat in the pages of books if you hollow out the pages to the correct thickness. Just make sure you don’t keep them in a popular or attractive book.
Hide Gold in Plants, Soil bags
I like this one – keep some gold in those heavy bags of top soil out in your garage, or one or two coins tucked away deep in the soil of a potted plant. Thieves don’t usually go after plants, as far as I know. Advantage of this: your gold won’t rattle around; people can’t feel it; it can’t easily drop out. Even watering your plants won’t hurt the gold, either.
Gold in Kitty Litter and Pet Food
Similar to hiding gold in plants and top soil – these bags are already heavy and no one is likely to rifle through them. You could keep a tupperware bin of cat or dog food set aside expressly for storing your gold. You won’t need to worry about replacing it – though you might want to check on the food and make sure it isn’t spoiling or infected with bugs. You could also make a false can of cat food and keep your gold there, too, with the other pet supplies.
Hiding Gold in Laundry Items
Laundry detergents – liquid or powder – could be great places. You could use an old powder detergent box, refill it with sand, and put the gold inside. But if sand seems too suspicious, just keep the powder in there. It’s only a few dollars’ worth – an amount worth spending to protect your gold.
Gold with Tools, In Garage/Toolshed
You might have all kinds of storage containers and junk drawers, boxes inside your garage, mudroom, toolshed or workshop. Many tools and toolboxes are heavy and full of other items that clank around and make noises – so your gold wouldn’t be out of place.
Gold Hidden with Kids’ Toys
Kids’ rooms are always messy – if they have a toy trunk or other storage space for toys, you could find a way to put gold in here, too – the advantage is that your kids will not know about it so they won’t walk off with it and thieves are unlikely to be looking for toys to steal or rooting through them. You need to make sure that you don’t mention it to your kids and that you don’t place the gold in toys that are portable which they can walk off with or lose.
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Don’t Talk About Your Gold Purchases
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Wherever you store your gold, make sure you keep track of it somehow – again, with discretion. Don’t leave a list of your gold hiding places lying around beside your computer. And all gold storage places are really also hiding places. You don’t want anyone stealing it, obviously.
A corollary of this is that you may want to keep your gold purchases to yourself and your spouse alone. Don’t talk to many people about it, if any at all.
I’d love to hear your own thoughts on gold storage – do you have suggestions to share – what to do, not to do? Do you disagree with any of the places I’ve suggested? Obviously, if there is a lot of agreement on a certain hiding place, it might be a sign that that place is too obvious – and others should be sought.
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{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
Those are some really good suggestions Money; most of which I’ve never thought of.
I completely agree with your opinion regarding safety deposit boxes. They’re great in times of peace and normality, but heaven forbid if we reach a point where you NEED to get your gold quickly, the chances of the bank being open and functioning are slim.
I’m a fan of having a big, secure gun safe in the basement, but then again you’ve got to take precautions as well. My grandmother has a story of someone in her family who had their entire safe robbed; the robbers (other family members) knew where it was, and backed an old farm truck right through the wall I don’t remember if they drug the safe away, or somehow got it lifted into the truck bed, but the entire thing was gone. That would suck majorly.
One question though; in the event of a house fire, is it possible that the gold would melt or otherwise have its value reduced substantially?
First, where do you live? :-)
Second, in the event TSHTF what do you plan to do with your gold? Walmart doesn’t take boullion to pay for diapers or beer. Just saying I don’t get the hype but then I am not a gloom and doom type of guy either so maybe I am just I’ll prepared.
“Walmart doesn’t take boullion to pay for diapers or beer.”
True, but if TS really does HTF, even Wally World might not be open. Though it’s not pleasant to think about, I think having an emergency supply of bullion is a type of insurance in case of a major economic collapse and society resorts to bartering and ‘true’ currencies (or as one of my econ professors told us- it’s a good idea to keep some in case you need to bribe the border guards to get out- haha).
Or what if our dollar loses so much value that it’s barely worth more than the paper its printed on? Gold also serves as a semi-decent protection against that, so it could be exchanged for a currency (or goods and services) that are still worth something.
It’s a bunch of “what ifs?”, but I think it’s a move worth making.
Thanks for the comments guys:) – I’m not a “gold bug freak”, I just think it’s interesting as an asset to pay attention to. It’s an interesting indicator for other things in the economy. I can’t say anything about WTSHTF, but everyone’s got a different idea about it – so maybe your gold would mean nothing, but maybe those coins would still help, too.
@Blake – if the fire gets hot enough, like above 1300C or 2000F, then yes, gold can melt… but it won’t “burn” in the sense of being destroyed or reduced to ashes. It would stay in some molten form, and would have to be melted back into a coin or bar format, I’d imagine. But that’s a really hot fire – if you just hold a coin in a candle flame, it’s not going to melt a gold coin, based on my understanding.
@Kyle – gold doesn’t have a lot of practical day to day uses, but people and some analysts think it will be one of the natural alternatives if there is ever a change in paper currencies. It may be far off, but there are signs of ideas shifting about the use of certain paper currencies.
I think you forgot one of the more obvious which is your special gold storage locker you built in your bunker. It would be under the assault rifles.
@Paul – ha ha…. well, there wouldn’t be any rifles in my home, but yes, I guess that is such an obvious one, no wonder I left it out – maybe that’s the first place many people would look:)
Good post Claire. I have a few gold and silver coins, and considering their worth these days, I might want to think about moving them out of the desk drawer and some place more secure. I like the idea of putting them in the freezer!
@ Blake
I think if the US Dollar becomes worth less than the paper it’s printed on, China is going to be mighty pissed! They have $300 Billion plus reasons to keep it from crashing. Although, the guy who coined the phrase “Chimerica” (Niall Ferguson) did suggest that the dollar could fall 20% to 30% from Oct 2009 levels. Scary stuff.
@ Kyle
I can’t even find a soda machine to take the $1 coin, much less try to get a cashier to accept a Gold American Eagle coin! So I’m right there with ya!!!
@Matt – I think I originally got the freezer idea from FrugalDad, in his post about where to keep extra cash around your house (see, I’m not the only one thinking of hiding places:))
@Paul the funny thing about that comment is the only person I know who makes it a habit of buying gold and silver coins probably does keep them
in his gun case with the assault and sniper rifles. No sane person would ever try to take them from him.
@ Paul & @ Kyle
I hate to stereotype, but there does appear to be a fairly strong correlation between folks who own an above quantity of gold as well as owning a firearm. Not trying to be a wiseacre, but just saying that both the firearm group and gold bull group appear to travel along parallel paths.
@Matt – I’m learning, too, that there is a coincedence between those two groups – or at least, some of those two groups. But if we did a Venn diagram they’d wouldn’t perfectly overlap at all. And look at me, I’m a gold bull, but not a gold bug, and you’ll never find me advocating keeping firearms in the house. But I’m Canadian, and there’s another correlation….:) I also advocate some survivalist preparation techniques, but I’m not waiting for the Rapture or anything like that, either… so no, I don’t have a cabin in the woods with a store of beef jerky (I’m vegetarian anyway):)
Hey, if the doom & gloom soothsayers are right… a few gold coins worth of beef jerky, a double barreled shotgun and the log cabin might be the way to go. (There goes my inner redneck talking trash again!)
Personally, I’m neutral on gold. Can’t short it because it might go to $2000, and can’t buy it here because it’s deviated so far from the trendline. Plus, the Fed is beginning to get some media pressure to protect the USD, and if they cave and raise rates, probably won’t be pretty for gold.
Call me a stick in the mud, but for my risk profile, the risk/reward ratio just isn’t there.
Kyle, me too I work with several of them who would definitely be in this category, I hear about gold all day long and they are definitely gun fanatics. If I really believed in more survival type scenarios I’d be stocking up on basic resources, guns, ammo, fuel and EMP hardened vehicles not gold bars, but to each his or her own.
I like the ideas for non-traditional hiding places. The best advice is at the end, and the way I’ve heard it said is “Loose lips sink ships.” Talking about any gold / silver / platinum /other precious metal purchase is the surest, fastest way to ensure that you are robbed and lose that metal.
Sure, the person you mention it to may not steal it. But if you tell one person, chances are he tells his buddy, who knows a guy who just got out of jail for armed robbery, etc. Not only could you lose your gold, your family could be in very real danger. So to sum it up, buy what you want, hide it well, and shut up about it :)
@Paul The survivalist crazies ( almost hate to call em that, but some of them are downright wacko ) do have a great point in stocking gold. If “TSHTF” really happens here in full force, the dollar becomes nearly worthless, and traditional places to buy things go away, gold ( and more importantly silver ) will probably become invaluable.
Farmer Joe isn’t likely to accept worthless federal reserve notes for a bushel of corn. After all, there are dollars everywhere, and he can’t spend em for anything. But silver or gold, he might consider very strongly, since he can spend them elsewhere. Money that can’t be printed to infinity has a ton of value, even if we’ve temporarily lost sight of that.
Will that crazy scenario ever happen? Who knows. But covering our heads and saying “it can’t happen here” probably isn’t the best way to prepare ;)
@SimpleLlama – I think that’s precisely the case for gold – it can’t be printed. Sure, rocks can’t be printed, either, but they’re everywhere. Gold isn’t. It also can’t be easily counterfeited, if at all. And it has unique properties among the rare metals which make it special, so that was probably its original intrinsic source of intrigue/value.
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