Out Of The Blue

A coin is always nicer to look at and has the ability to be worth more than spot price for collectibility down the road. As for the ebay game, the more I get into collecting, the more counterfits I see, but if you get a good few sellers that you can trust and then just varify on this site any that you have any reservations about, I'm sure you'll be just fine.

You guys are both cracking me up. 25k and 1,200 population. I live in a town with a population of 145.

You guys are lucky I probably have more than 145 people in my neighborhood alone, but we are also the proud winners of the worst traffic in the country.

Holy cow! 145 and 412? Wow, that's definitely got my tiny town beat! If I live in a shoebox you guys live in a ring box! lol. What's the sq. mileage of your towns? The town next to mine only has a couple hundred people but its also only a few square miles. I understand that 1200 is quite a few people, but spread out over 31 square miles makes it a pretty small population. Although I know there's definitely smaller ones, especially out west. But for Massachusetts my town is pretty darn small population wise lol, land wise it's quite large... But I wouldn't change it for the world.. More room to hunt. If I can't shoot in my back yard I'd never live there, lol.

Since I was a kid our population stayed around 7-800 but has had a booming increase in the past few years, because unfortunately a lot of dairy farms shut down and sold off land.

guess this is a small world as we all live small.
yes I have almost all the silver eagle dollars , some franklins and proof sets from the 60's.
and some bars. then I love ike's have two complete sets and many extras.

guess I over think things , if I can't find something new I want something .

My grade school had 2,500. My High School had about 6 or 7,000. Not even sure how many thousands were in my colleges. And those were only a few of many in my city.
Coin shows every weekend. To many coin stores to count.
Of course the many disadvantages are the massive crime rate that goes along with a large population.
As to coin availability, with the internet, there is a coin store a few finger strokes away. For example I just got a catalog from a place called Miller's Mint. It is 35 pages long and all coins. Many, many other coin dealer web sites. Far better than ebay, sometimes. Try some of those and request a catalog. Same for coin related products with places such as Wizard Coin Supply.

I live in a Nickle and Dime State Maryland with some of the worst traffic in the Nation. Idiots for politicians that are not for the middle class for sure. So consider yourself lucky you don't live here.

What do you intend to "do" with your collection? Squirrel it away? Display it?
Consider the storage of said items. Mint coins should be encased, either in slabs, or 2x2 mylar+cardboard flips+binders. Bars you can stack on top of each other and store away. You also wouldn't feel bad if you had to make alloy from your bars or sell them in a jiffy. You can stick a couple in your wallet or truck as emergency travel "money".
Coins are a different beast because you have to make sure you don't touch them and degrade their condition. Bars are bars. Coins depend on type, variety, date, errors if any, etc.

Best of both worlds: American Silver Eagles (ASEs). They are chunky (as all American things are lol) but they are well recognized and carry a small premium over bars in most cases.

But, depending on how deep you're going into the rabbit hole, if it's under 500 ounces you should consider 100 ounce bars. If over 500 ounces you can get a monster box of ASEs (500).

I have a variety of everything from bars, rounds, world government issues, sterling, and numismatic coins. Should I ever need to sell a few ounces I have a variety of options for the buyer, I can justify higher prices here and there, and the collection isn't mundane to look at. So I spice it up with variety. If you don't like variety and want to go with purely the weight value then go for 100 ounce bars or 1000 bars but be aware that not everyone can afford to buy such a huge bar from you so they'll want it cheaper and plus you won't have the option of selling 40 ounces if you needed to sell just 40 ounces; you'd be stuck selling 100 ounce intervals. I like 10 ounce bars but haven't gotten around to buying any just yet. Go with your gut.