Gold/Silver stacking

I am a newbie to collecting precious metals.....called stacking I am told. I'm pretty good with stocks,whether it be day trading or being bullish. Everyone tells me money is worthless,but my philosophy has always been CASH IS KING! I have  25 k to invest,so it is between getting a long term CD or buying pm's. I am just getting into buying gold and silver with a friends advice(my 25k is peanuts to him,so my investing is small scale compared to him),but he says to buy gold and silver bars(bullion) @ .9999 instead of .999,and buy it in 10 oz bars  and he says stay away from coins unless they are maple leafs or buffalo/indian head coins. Any advice from a normal common guy  invester?   Also........he said to physically possess my gold/silver instead of getting paper etf's.

Pros and cons both ways obviously.  But I am interested in why you narrowed it down to long-term CD or PMs?

I just started stacking as well. I'm doing it for the long term and hopefully it will prove to be a good investment in the future. diversify your portfolio as i've been told is the way to go. I'm more inclined stacking silver for now and i just bought added only a couple gold. i'm gonna be patient and start stacking gold if/when it hits the 900-1000 range and back in the truck if it goes <900.

as far is the oz's are concerned, i purchased various sizes, ranging from 1, 2, 3, 5, and 10 ounces in silver. some are coins and some in bars.

for gold: i only bought a 5 and 10 gram assayer cards...

would love to hear some advice on here as well! in the meantime, keep stackin'!

Historically gold and silver are awful investments and in a SHTF scenario ammo food  water and shelter will be much more valuable---I stack for the pleasure of holding the shiny--ASE's and Libertads are really cool and buy placer gold and 1/10 AGE's whenever the urge hits me.....Silver is in a longterm bear trend and ZSL(2x short) has been a big moneymaker since 2011,,treading lightly with metals is prudent and diversification is crucial to a healthy portfolio

Raiders22....I am fairly conservative on my stocks and investing,so other than putting my cash in a long term cd or precious metals,what else is there? Even a 5 year cd with a minimum investment of 25k only  pays 2.30%. That's better than a regular savings account,but still pretty pitiful  I shoot for stocks that pay at least a 4% dividend and will go up to 11%,but anything over that is too risky.Real estate is not my thing,and gambling is too stressful,although   a fun,profitable  hobby    Any other ideas for investing?

Do not put your money into CD's. You will get crushed by inflation with that approach.