If your purpose in buying gold and silver is for a store of value against inflation and the declining dollar.  Your best opportunity to secure these items without a huge mark up is by buying gold Krugerrands.  These carry the least amount of mark up and they are widely accepted world wide and easily sold.

If you are buying silver stay away from Sterling, Commerative items, and confine your purchases to Bullion Bars, Bullion Rounds such as Apmex, Engelhard.  Try and keep the markup you're paying above melt price to not more than $1.00 an oz + postage.  If the bidding goes beyond that you're probably better off just waiting for the next item up.  If you want to buy coins I would stick with the American Eagle and the Canadian Maple both of which carry a premium of + or - $1.75 per coin + shipping.  If you want to purchase large reproduction coins a trusted mint is Washington Mint and one pound to them means 16 troy ozs not the 12 which actually represents a troy pound.

You should stay away from Chinese coins because those actually coming from China have a very high rate of fake coins.  It is difficult to detect which is fake and which are real. So if you are buying just for an investment you should avoid all foreign coins except the Canadian Maple Leaf and the Mexican Libertad (Silver).  I have found most fakes are represented by bullion bars in the form of currency, 1898 Morgan Silver Coins (US) in weights of 4, 8, & 12 troy ozs.  REMEMBER:  All bullion and coins you purchase should have on them .999% fine silver, and the weight of the bar.  Some companies will leave the weight off but if the coin doesn't denote the purity of the product your best option is to pass on the purchase of it.

Please take the time to check if this information has been helpful to you or not. Thank you. :-)