Precious metal can be bought in many different varieties of gram or troy ounce. The main choice is saving for a big investment or several smaller ones.

Pro for large investment

• The biggest and most relevant advantage is smaller cost per unit. It is cheaper to produce, assuming quantity is sufficient to overcome batch switching costs, and easier to ship. Think about it: A single 1 kilogram bar is much easier to unpack than 100 times a 10 gram bar. Packaging is also greatly reduced, most products use the exact same base packaging for smaller units (below 50/100 gram), so anything in the upper echelon of that range is cheaper than the lower options.
• It is easier to handle for you personally. As suggested above in packaging, many small units take up more space than a single big one.
• This one depends on specific circumstances but it is very likely that you spend less on shipping when buying large bars and coins, as you require less deliveries or are above the free shipment threshold.
• With not quite so precious metals, anything but the largest bars is simply not profitable.

Cons for big purchases

• It is a lot of money tied up in a single item.
• Variety is much less; with smaller items you can buy more, as such you can buy more different brands or series*.
• Storing it is more difficult; you will not be able to spread it around as much as with smaller and lighter pieces.
• Finding the best metal to suit your diversification needs is not all that simple without actually trying it. Buying a single large bar is therefor not advisable when your are still figuring things out. This stage might last for years, even reappear as your situation changes. Also diversification is simpler to achieve with small items, as they allow for more fine tuning.

Pros for small items

• They are much easier to sell: Logging around 10 kilograms of silver is rather annoying and smaller stores (the jeweller in your block) might not accept large items. It is not only annoying, 10 kilos is sufficiently heavy to cause injury to yourself or possibly damage the bar as it crashes into something on the road.
• Handling, admiring really, your collection is much more fun when it consist of many gorgeous treasures then if it were just a single plastic sealed cast bar. For larger bars are typically not put in pretty credit card format coin cards, they are only sealed, possibly with a paper certificate in the back.
• Who does not love to own many small pretty things?

Cons of smaller investments

• The cost per items tends to be much higher. The author has seen examples of 1 gram costing the exact same amount as 2/2,5 gram. The savings usually start around 10 gram, so anything below that is just buying for the collection instead of possible profit.
• Finding something in your hoard can become time consuming, largely due to the volume that you have to sift through. The space available is also not particularly large for the working class.
• Constantly looking for new items is time consuming. Though it can be fun and a good hobby; we are calling this an expensive hobby as buying precious metals can be considered investing, which could net a positive return. And investments always carry a large up front cash payment.

 

*The possible benefit of buying series is discussed in 13 Investment grade precious metal collectibles: Sentiment or smart?