Metal and Crypto are the two things I simply will not invest in. I have a lovely Atocha coin because Mel Fisher was a good friend. But that isn't an investment. It's jewelry.
I 100% agree with Slip. Most people who invest in gold end up dying with unrealized profits/losses. The only people who actually make money with gold are: Gold miners; people who buy and sell gold for a living; and the heirs of the people who invested in gold. Gold has been historically flat for centuries -- a single 8.3 gram Aureus was enough to buy a nice toga in the Roman forum. And a good suit today costs the same.
I agree with being diversified. But not gold or crypto. One is a lousy investment. The other is a crazy investment.
One of the coins I have bought a lot of are Imperial German 20 mark gold pieces. They have the exact gold content of the very popular British sovereign but can be bought for $15 to $30 less per coin. I can usually get them around 6% over spot and they contain a bit less than a quarter of an ounce of gold.
I think of the Germans who were lucky enough to have these same coins in 1923. They still had the same buying power that they always did, while those with paper money or bank accounts had to take a wheel barrow full of money to the store to buy a loaf of bread.
Or on a more personal level, when I was in high school and college, I ran a mail order business in German and Imperial Austrian coins. During that time, I only handled two gold pieces a Saxony gold 10 marks of the 1870s and an Austrian gold four ducats restrike dated 1915. The latter I remember buying for $16 and selling for $35 which was the catalogue value at the time, but that coin is priced at over $1,000 today. If I had a crystal ball in those days, I would have held on to both of them. I don't remember the numbers off hand on the Saxony coin but they were probably similar. I have bought a stack of the 4 ducat pieces, which contain 0.4428 ounce of gold in the last few years, paying around $800 each. For years, two of the three bullion dealers I usually deal with priced these coins when they had them at a low premium over spot, one at 4% over and the other at 3% over. Now both want more than 10% over spot for them.
My wife grew up in eastern Europe (and has three citizenships, US plus one EU country plus one non-EU country) and she well remembers one day when an amount of money that in the morning would buy an apartment in the same afternoon would only buy a bicycle. She is a big fan of holding gold and silver, but we also invest in real estate where we have a rental income.
In recent years there has been a lot of gold buying by central banks, and I suspect they know what they are doing.
I will be watching the SVB impact on the precious metals market. Financial turmoil elsewhere can push two ways on precious metals, up in a flight to safety, and down as people liquidate paper gold or silver contracts to cover margin calls. Often there is a temporary move downward followed by a movement upward. So far, both gold and silver have been up since the SVB problems. Silver also moves on industrial demand, and the solar energy craze that seems to just be getting started is going to require a lot of silver.