There are others on here who will know more about this than me but I will try to answer part of you post. Gold is currently out of my price range so I have not looked into it very much. The research I have done was on silver so that is all I will comment on.

There are basically two ways to invest in silver, you can buy silver certificates or the real stuff. At the time, silver certificates seemed to be more like playing the stock market than actually buying silver. I felt that owning the silver outright was the best for me so that is what I have been doing. It is actually kind of easy to buy. At least in this area. Just go to a coin shop where old and rare coins can be found. Most of them will have silver or know where to find it.

What you want to buy is called silver bullion or silver rounds. You will need to check a couple of things. First check that what you are about to buy is pure silver. The purest you can get is .999% pure silver and each piece of bullion or round will be marked. The second thing you want to look for is that the piece is 1 Troy ounce. Again it will be marked. You don't want anything less that .999% silver and 1 troy ounce in each piece. The silver can be bought several different sizes, 1 ounce, 10 ounces, 100 ounce bars ect and in different shapes and designs stamped into the silver. None of that other stuff matters as long as it is .999% pure and at least 1 troy ounce.

A couple of web sites I have found useful are goldsilver.com which gives the current price of each precious metal along with informative articles. Another one is kitco.com which also has useful articles and metals prices.