First Time Interested In Buying A Maple Leaf

Or in more general terms, tell me what your favorite bullion is to buy at the moment, and why.

Oh man, there are more Maple Leaf choices than I knew. Gold, Silver, Platinum, Palladium. Cool.
I see the prices of all are dropping lately. I don't understand why. You would think with Covid and other current events they should not be falling. Am I missing something?

Thanks.
Honestly, I'm surprised at the concern in those threads given Gold's excellent returns in recent years. And prices are still very near all time highs.

Unfortunately our icon maker doesn't have an [I Disagree] image...

I am not at all surprised at the commentary. All precious metals (Silver, Gold, Platinum, Palladium, Rhodium) are essentially commodities whose value is subject to a number of factors. On this forum, we focus on numismatic uses and that can often lead to numismatic tunnel vision. All PMs have industrial uses and in the case of Gold (others less so though silver is in second place) as an investment instrument. Where PMs are used as investment instruments, they are primarily a hedge against currency fluctuations. PMs do not grow... at all. If you buy an ounce of gold... in 10 years, you will have an ounce of gold. where as $2K in the bank at even a meagre 1% interest is worth over $2,200. PMs are a hedge against devaluation of the currency in the hope that $2,000 invested will convert to more than $2,200 in 10 years. Remember though... it could just as easily be $1,500. <Check a long term timeline for Platinum>

With their industrial uses, there is a reason and mechanism to keep the values within boundaries. Supply and demand require that if the price increases beyond a certain range, demand will drop as the products that use the PM will price themselves out of the market; the resulting oversupply will reduce the price and the balance is retained.

The rise of alternate hedge instruments such as crypto currencies has diluted some of the $$ going to gold. Whether cryptos last or not is not the question... they are here as of today and diluting Gold's use as an inflation hedge.

Gold and Silver are also subject to some degree of manipulation by big players... whether this is real or not; it is common perception and perception is often reality. You see this in the difference between the price on paper and the price of physical. There has been conjecture that should everyone holding gold or silver certificates request that the certificate be converted to physical, there are insufficient supplies to meet the demand and it is this disparity that causes the spread between the market and retail price of PMs. Again, whether true or not, it reinforces the perception that there are conspiracy theories everywhere. When that happens, the price is often subject to emotional drivers rather than economic or objective.

Which leads to the biggest distorter of values in a traded market... the technical analysis... When you use dots on a chart with absolutely no perspective on what underlies the dots then all that is happening is gambling, relying on the hope that others are using similar analysis tools only that yours is 1 day ahead. The company I work for is publicly traded and has met their published growth targets every quarter for the last 5+ years but the stock trades in a 5% range week over week. There is no reason for it but you can always tell when some analyst issues a new model and predicts... without understanding the company's market... that the stock is set to (soar/plummet) depending on their dots and lines on the chart. There are tens and possibly hundreds of drivers into the demand and therefore price for PMs as a commodity... Technical analysis factors none of them but since the big brokerage houses use technical analysis programs and have vast sums of money to throw around, they are one of the larger "thumbs on the scale" when assessing the price on any given day.

All of this is a long winded way of saying... Bullion metals are not a growth investment... they are a hedge against currency fluctuation and may be in the process of being supplanted by alternates. Any day to day or even month to month trend cannot be understood by simply evaluating a single driver...

I am a big proponent of silver and gold coins... both numismatic (NCLT) and bullion but I am drawn to these as a collector... not an investor. It is my hobby and if I see a positive return then double thumbs up. For my retirement, I have real investments ... stocks, deposit accounts etc... I don't rely on my hobby to fund my retirement or even pay for that holiday I am planning when we can again all travel.

vonigohcr is spot on (ha ha) with the analysis and observations. FWIW I spoke with several millennials this year who are buying baskets of cryptos and have zero interest in PM.

Since you are in the US the large online US dealers are a good option.

Cheers!

Another way to look at traders is as price smoothers. They 'eat' volatility and help stabilize the price.
All those indicators and analysis are intended to predict human emotion and front-run it. Not so much front-running the other traders, though on short time scales that is important too.
That's good for holders too. In this case, my money flowing into the market is pulling it back from the abyss. And later when price starts flying higher, I will remove my investment.