Are you one of the millions of investors actively buying gold? Have you thought about your options for silver instead? After all, if you have only a limited budget (and let’s face it, most modern consumers are feeling financial pressure) you may want to diversify a bit in order to obtain a larger amount of precious metals for your portfolio.

Now, this is not an article advocating against the buying gold. In fact, it is suggesting that you remain in any gold buying patterns, but also consider converting a portion of that budget for buying gold into funds for buying silver too.

Why both of the metals? If you looked at the rate of growth that gold demonstrated during the 2010 calendar year you would see that it staged an impressive 27% per ounce between January and December. Now, if you look at silver prices you might be startled to see that the per ounce price doubled over the course of that same period. That is a 50% increase in price, and means that someone holding silver from the early part of the year actually saw their investment value double.

With figures like this, it just makes sense to review how you are buying gold in order to see if there is any way to squeeze a bit of silver buying into the mix. This leads to the issue of exactly how to purchase your silver holdings. The experts all agree that physically acquiring the asset is the wisest course of action (exactly as you do with gold), and silver is available in the form of bullion bars and coins, or just in standard minted coins as well.

Which is the best choice? Realistically there are really only two ways to view the matter. If you feel that you don’t want or need any sort of “built in” security, you can go right ahead and purchase the purest silver bullion possible in the form of larger bricks or bars. If, on the other hand, you would like a portion of the investment insured against loss, then you will want to acquire the coins.

These can be found (as already mentioned) in the form of pure bullion, and normally at a full “troy” ounce weight. You can also work with a reliable dealer to get “junk” coins that contain between 40% and 90% pure silver and which come in large bags that have “face values” derived from the monetary, not the market, values of the coins. For instance, a one thousand dollar face value bag of quarters would have 720 ounces of pure silver!