Different type of gold/silver question

[Libertytree]

First of all, I'm already a firm PM's kinda guy.

Here's the quandry though... I find myself in the position of moving to Costa Rica for an extended amount of time and I'd like to know if the PM's I am going to take with me are better served in gold or silver, both examples are GAE's or SAE's. Am I better off with one over the other? Are they both equal anywhere in the world? If and when there comes a time I want to sell is one more acceptable than the other or is it purely based on the metal? I'm silver heavy right now too.

I'll be in a remote area but accessible to both San Jose and Panama, so getting to a dealer is no problem.

 

[AceNZ]

I'm not sure about Costa Rica and Panama, but in a number of places I've traveled in Europe, Asia and the Pacific, I've found gold to be much more liquid than silver. Latin America does have a longer history with silver than many other places, so it might be different there.

However, in addition to liquidity and resale value, another issue to consider when moving and traveling is that silver takes up much more space than gold -- so it's more difficult to keep secure, assuming you have more than just a couple of coins of course. And if you did decide to ship it somewhere, gold is also much less expensive to ship since it weighs 1/50th as much as an equivalent dollar value of silver.

It's also the case that unusual coins can work in your favor. SAEs, for example, command a considerable premium here in New Zealand, since they're pretty difficult to find.

One strategy might be to sell your silver in the US before you leave and then buy an equivalent dollar amount of either the SLV or GLD ETFs, so that you remain fully invested. Then when you get to your destination, sell the ETF, wire the funds to a local bank, and use them to buy from a local dealer. That way you save the risk of traveling with lots of PMs, and you have the advantage of being able to talk to a local dealer about the market before making a purchase decision. The risk is that the local market might have a much higher bid/ask spread than a dealer in the US, but it might be a risk worth taking, depending on the specifics of your circumstances.