Once you open your account, any IRS-approved precious metals can go into your Precious Metals IRA. Metals that receive IRS approval are also graded for condition by a third-party certification organization (of which there are several in the US), which authenticates the grade (purity) and weight of the metal to provide impartial verification that you’re getting exactly what you paid for.
Your NGG Account Executive can provide you with all the information you need to pick out your precious metals, however we generally recommend you invest in coins, which have value to collectors (called numismatic value) that exceed their precious metals content. That means you actually get more for your money than just the metal, and the value of your investment can grow even faster!


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You probably noticed the word “Proof” appeared several times on the list of permissible precious metals. National Gold Group recommends proofs because, unlike regular coins, proof coins are struck using a special, high-quality minting process that results in a better looking coin (known as high relief), making them especially sought after by collectors and investors alike. Also, their increased scarcity generally causes them to outperform their regular counterparts. Another reason we recommend proofs is because of a long history of certain government actions and regulations concerning precious metals.

Proof gold and silver has a limited supply.
Each proof set is delivered to your government required third party storage facility
with its own official U.S. Mint Certificate of Authenticity.
The US government has actually made it illegal to own precious metals (specifically gold and silver) three times during its history, the most recent being in 1933 (which wasn’t fully repealed until 1997). Congress has repeatedly decided that owning precious metals is a privilege, not a right, and Congress, with the permission of the Courts, reserves the right to confiscate precious metals from citizens at any time. However, US law requires the government provide a payment of “just value” for anything it confiscates from private citizens. In other words, the government can force you to sell your metals to them and it will decide how much to pay you.
If that were to happen, precious metals without numismatic value would be confiscated and the government would pay fair market value. Proof coins would be infinitely more complex to confiscate because of all the non-market factors that add numismatic value. Providing fair value for proof coins would have to take all of those factors into account, which would create a logistical nightmare for the government, so Congress has historically taken the easy way out and exempted proof coins from confiscation. For that reason, we recommend our clients hold proofs in their Precious Metals IRAs to secure their investments as much as possible against government confiscation.
This may sound like a lot of legal maneuvering, so let’s use an example assuming that you and your neighbor each own $10,000 worth of gold coins. You own proofs and your neighbor has bullion. One day the government issues a confiscation order. Your neighbor hands over his gold and gets $10,000 cash in return. On the other hand, you get to keep your $10,000 worth of proof coins, which continue to grow in value over the years. Though your neighbor now has $10,000 cash in hand, he has lost the entire future value of his investment. What does that mean for your retirement accounts? Well, we saw in the last section how cash tends to perform against precious metals, (with the dollar declining by 11% in only five years) so you can imagine what will happen to your poor neighbor’s investments while yours is still backed by gold!