by Mike Fuljenz

Owning gold coins and bullion is a smart way to protect your wealth in the event of a global crisis or even inflation. Gold is the only real money to withstand the test of 5,000 years.

But owning physical gold comes with a big challenge: keeping it!

Gold draws bad guys like honey draws flies. Criminals love to steal gold. It’s a large amount of value in a small, easy-to-conceal package. It’s relatively harder to trace and easier to sell these days.

With rising gold prices this century, gold thefts are on the rise with home invasions targeting gold becoming more dangerous, even deadly. In December 2011, two masked men broke into a home in Richmond, Texas, put a gun to a 12-year-old child’s head, and demanded to know where the valuables were. They made off with $500,000 in precious metals and cash, along with the family SUV. In February 2012, an elderly couple and their son in Gonzales, Louisiana, were viciously attacked by thieves who took a safe containing a collection of gold coins valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars. All three victims died. The safe was found, empty.