Your Account
The Gold & Silver 101 series covers the essentials of saving
and investing in physical precious metals and explain all you
need to know to begin investing in bullion.
Gold & Silver 101
Comments
A gold hallmark is the quickest way to find out what a piece of gold really is: how pure it is, where it was verified, and sometimes when and by whom it was made. In many countries, hallmarks are more than tradition. They’re a legal requirement, enforced by independent assay offices that test gold and … Continue Reading 
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Karat and carat sound the same but usually measure different things. A karat measures the purity of gold, on a scale of 24. A carat measures the weight of a gemstone, where one carat equals 0.2 grams. A “24 karat” gold bar is pure gold, while a “1 carat” diamond weighs 200 milligrams. The confusion … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Gold purity is the proportion of pure gold in a piece of gold, measured in karats (K) or as a fineness stamp out of 1,000. A gold bar stamped 999.9 is 99.99% pure. A ring stamped 750 is 18 karat, or 75% gold. Everything else in the piece is made up of other metals, usually … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Every gram of gold ever mined adds up to roughly 220,000 tonnes. That includes everything from the treasures of ancient Egypt to the gold bars in central bank vaults today. The best current estimate, from the World Gold Council, puts total above-ground gold stocks at around 222,600 tonnes as of mid-2026. That sounds like a … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Junk silver is an American term, and a misleading one. It refers to pre-1965 United States circulating coinage. The dimes, quarters and half dollars that were struck in 90% silver before the Coinage Act of 1965 ended silver dimes and quarters, and cut the half dollar to 40%. The word “junk" describes the absence of … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Fine silver is as close to pure silver as the metal gets. 999 parts per thousand, or 99.9% pure, sometimes taken even further to 9999. It’s the standard used for investment bars, coins, and rounds, and if you’re holding one and wondering what it’s actually worth, or how it differs from sterling silver, this guide … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Sterling silver is an alloy of 92.5% pure silver and 7.5% other metal, almost always copper. That 92.5% is what the “925" stamp found on jewellery, cutlery, and tableware actually refers to. It is a mark of composition, not a brand name. Pure silver on its own is soft enough to dent or scratch under … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Many banks in Singapore, UOB among them, offer something called a “gold savings account". These are an account that tracks the gold price and lets you build up a holding in grams, all through your existing online banking. It looks, on the surface, exactly like buying gold. In practice, it’s a meaningfully different product from … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Not all silver is the same. A coin, a bar, a ring, and a set of cutlery can each be stamped with a different number (999, 958, 925, 900, or 800) and that number represents the piece’s silver purity: how much of it is actually silver, and how much is something else. This guide covers … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Once you’ve decided silver deserves a place in your portfolio, the next question is where to actually start. A quick search returns a daunting number of options. Physical bars, physical coins, vaulted storage, ETFs, mining stocks, even futures, each with its own costs, risks, and trade-offs that aren’t always obvious upfront. BullionStar has been helping … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Buying your first gold bar can feel like a big decision. Beyond simply choosing to invest in gold, there’s the size to pick, the price to make sense of, and the question of where to actually buy from without overpaying. None of that needs to be complicated, but it helps to walk in knowing the … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
On 5 February 1869, two Cornish miners digging near Moliagul, in Victoria, Australia, pulled a single lump of gold weighing over 109 kilograms out of the ground, just a few centimetres below the surface. It’s still the largest gold nugget ever found anywhere on Earth. Within weeks it had been melted down into ingots and … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
If you’re weighing up how to invest in precious metals, gold and silver are usually the starting point, but they’re no longer the whole picture. Platinum and palladium each offer their own risk and demand profile, and a growing number of investors now hold some combination of all four as part of a diversified portfolio. … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Gold and the S&P 500 sit at opposite ends of the investment spectrum: one is a finite, physical store of value with thousands of years of history, the other a basket of 500 of America’s largest companies representing the growth engine of the world’s biggest economy. Investors researching gold vs the S&P 500 are usually … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Why is gold valuable? For investors, that’s not idle curiosity, it’s worth knowing exactly where an asset’s value comes from before you put money into it. Gold is valuable thanks to a combination of five distinct features: it’s rare, chemically almost indestructible, threaded through thousands of years of human history and culture, genuinely useful in … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
If you’re considering how to invest in palladium, it’s worth understanding upfront how different a market this is from gold, silver, or even platinum. Palladium is a platinum-group metal in its own right, driven overwhelmingly by industrial demand from petrol and hybrid vehicle catalytic converters, and supplied almost entirely as a by-product of platinum and … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Can gold rust? Not in its pure form. Real 24 karat gold is one of the least reactive metals on the periodic table, known as a noble metal. It is immune to the oxidation that turns iron to rust, and resistant to the tarnishing that dulls silver or copper over time. That’s why gold coins, … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
If you’re considering how to invest in platinum, you’re looking at a smaller, more specialised corner of the precious metals market than gold or silver, but one that offers unique opportunities. Platinum trades at a steep discount to gold today, after decades of trading at a premium to it, and carries industrial demand from diesel … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Palladium occupies an unusual place among precious metals. For a stretch between 2018 and 2022 it traded at a higher price than even gold, driven almost entirely by its role in catalytic converters for petrol and hybrid vehicles, before falling sharply as the shift towards electric vehicles cast doubt over its industrial demand story. Unlike … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
The term “gold standard" gets used loosely in modern financial conversation, invoked in debates over central bank policy, BRICS de-dollarization proposals, and calls for gold-backed currencies, often without much precision about what it actually meant in practice. It is worth understanding that it wasn’t one fixed system: the gold standard took several distinct forms over... Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Tokenised gold has moved from a niche crypto product to an increasingly popular way to hold gold exposure, with PAX Gold (PAXG) and Tether Gold (XAUT) now among the most widely held gold-backed tokens on the market. BullionStar now accepts both tokens directly as payment for physical gold, silver and platinum — a straightforward way … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Silver’s lower price tag compared to gold doesn’t make it any less of a target for counterfeiters. Plated coins, “sterling" jewellery stamped with false hallmarks, and bars misrepresented as fine silver all circulate in the market, and rising silver prices only add more incentive to pass off fakes as genuine. Stories of buyers discovering their … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Platinum has an unusual history among precious metals: for decades leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, it traded at a significant premium to gold, prized for its rarity and its heavy use in jewellery and diesel catalytic converters. Today, that relationship has reversed entirely — platinum now trades at well under half the price … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Every piece of gold on Earth, from the items of jewellery we wear, to the bullion coins and bars used for investment, is older than the planet itself. Long before there was an Earth to mine it from, gold was forged in some of the most violent events in the universe: colliding neutron stars and … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Building wealth over time comes down to a simple principle: choosing assets that can grow steadily over years or decades, and giving them the time they need to compound and appreciate in value. Long-term investments span a wide range of options, from stocks and index funds to real estate, bonds, and physical assets like gold … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Fiat currency (also called fiat money) is the form of money most of us use every day, yet few stop to consider what it actually is or where its value comes from. The term comes from the Latin word for decree: fiat currency is money that a government declares to be legal tender, not because … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Every investment portfolio carries risk. Managing that risk is in the investor’s interest, and one way to do it is through diversification, which spreads risk across assets that don’t all move in the same direction at the same time. Done well, a diversified portfolio can reduce the impact of any single market downturn on your … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Low risk investments prioritise capital preservation over high returns. Rather than chasing maximum growth, investors who favour lower-risk assets are primarily focused on protecting what they have. They value keeping pace with inflation, generating modest income, and avoiding the kind of losses that come with more volatile assets like equities or cryptocurrency. It’s a category... Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Silver occupies a unique position in the investment world. It has served as money and a store of value for thousands of years, yet today more than half of all silver demand comes from industry — solar panels, electric vehicles, electronics, and medical devices. That dual nature is what makes silver different from any other … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Mustafa Centre is one of Singapore’s most recognisable retail landmarks. Located in the Little India neighbourhood on Syed Alwi Road, the 24-hour department store has served Singapore’s diverse community for decades, and its gold section draws buyers from across the island — particularly those looking for 22-karat Indian-style gold jewellery. For buyers focused on... Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Gold and silver are the two most widely held precious metals, and the question of which to buy, or how to split between them, is one most investors encounter at some point. Both metals have served as stores of value for thousands of years, both are used as inflation hedges, and both are held by … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
If you’re holding gold and watching the price move, deciding when to sell can feel even more difficult than deciding when to buy. Sell now and the price might keep climbing without you. Wait, and a pullback could erase gains you had theoretically made. That uncertainty is often what keeps people holding indefinitely, waiting for … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Timing the gold market is one of the most common concerns for new and experienced buyers alike. When the gold price is rising, it feels like you have missed the opportunity. When it falls, it feels like it might fall further. The result, for many people, is waiting indefinitely for a moment that never quite … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
For investors looking to hold physical gold and silver outside their home country, the choice of jurisdiction matters as much as the metal itself. Offshore storage is about more than convenience — it is a way to diversify the legal, political, and banking risks that come with holding all of your wealth in a single … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
A troy ounce is equal to 31.1035 grams — slightly heavier than the standard (avoirdupois) ounce used in everyday life, which weighs 28.35 grams. That difference of roughly 2.75 grams matters enormously in precious metals, because gold, silver, platinum, and palladium are priced and traded in troy ounces everywhere in the world. When you see … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
At BullionStar, we believe in physical gold and silver bullion — the real thing, held in your hand or stored in your name in a secure vault. Owning physical bullion means owning an asset outright, with no counterparty, no fund manager, and no institution standing between you and your wealth. Investors frequently encounter paper alternatives … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Gold hit a record high above US$5,500 per ounce in early 2026, following its strongest annual performance since 1979, and the question now is how far the rally can extend. This guide sets out the gold price forecast for 2027, drawing on predictions from major banks and institutional analysts including J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Gold and silver prices do not move at random. They react to a set of well-understood macroeconomic forces, and recognising those forces as they develop can help you plan ahead, position your allocation appropriately, and understand why prices are moving in a particular direction. Below are the key drivers of gold and silver prices, explained … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 0 Comments
Deciding how much of your portfolio to allocate to gold and silver, and how to split between the two metals, is one of the most important decisions you will make as a precious metals investor. This guide walks through the leading allocation frameworks, how to weight gold against silver, when to rebalance, and which metal … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Choosing your preferred gold dealer is one of the most important decisions you will make as a gold investor. With a wide range of dealers operating online and in-person, the options can feel overwhelming, and not all of them offer the same standards of pricing, transparency, and service. The good news is that identifying a … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 0 Comments
If you’re considering how to invest in gold, you’re not alone. Gold is one of the world’s most sought-after investment assets, and demand for gold investment has grown significantly in recent years. But a quick search returns a daunting number of options: physical gold, ETFs, gold mining stocks, IRAs. Knowing where to start, and which … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Perhaps you’ve been saving for years, received an inheritance, or are just starting your investment journey. As cash savings steadily lose purchasing power to inflation, many investors turn to gold as a proven store of value. So is gold a good investment? In this guide, the team at BullionStar draws on years of experience in … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
Le Freeport is a high-security storage and display facility located in Singapore. Offering secure, discreet storage of high value assets (including fine arts, collectibles, and precious metals) it is an ideal choice for gold and silver storage in Singapore. In this guide we take a look at Le Freeport, often dubbed Asia’s Fort Knox; what … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 Comments
The gold silver ratio (GSR) is a metric that compares the value of gold to silver, specifically, how many ounces of silver it takes to buy one ounce of gold. Currently sitting at around 67, it’s one of the most widely tracked measures in precious metals investing, and is used by some investors as a … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 5 Comments
Gold and silver bullion are the world’s best-known and most widely held precious metals, and both metals have played key roles throughout recorded history as forms of money, as forms of saving, and as means of wealth protection. Today, physical gold and physical silver in the form of investment bars and investment coins are highly … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 6 Comments
Gold, silver, and platinum are the three major precious metals available as investment-grade bullion. Each is traded through the same network of LBMA and LPPM accredited refiners, and each qualifies as an Investment Precious Metal (IPM) in Singapore, exempting it from GST, yet each behaves quite differently as an asset. The choice between which to … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 6 Comments
Every gold buyer eventually faces the same question: bars or coins? Both are widely available in a similar range of purities and sizes, and both let you own physical gold outright, but the two products differ in premium, divisibility, recognisability, and legal status in ways that can meaningfully affect which one suits you. This guide … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 1 Comments
How is gold taxed in Singapore? For anyone buying bullion here, it’s one of the first questions worth answering, and the answer is unusually favourable. It’s the single biggest reason Singapore has become a hub for precious metals investment rather than simply a place where precious metals are sold. In short, investment-grade gold in Singapore … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 1 Comments
One of the most important decisions when saving and investing in precious metals is where to store your gold, silver and platinum bars and coins. Paramount to this choice of storage location is safety and security. Given the high value content of physical precious metals, many people choose to store their precious metals bars and … Continue Reading
Gold & Silver 101 1 Comments
What is a Gold/Silver/Platinum Spot Price? The spot price for a precious metal is the current market price for that precious metal which is traded in the wholesale market for immediate delivery. The spot price is usually quoted in US dollars per troy ounce and refers to a quotation for a standard but large quantity. … Continue Reading
Buy from BullionStar
Sell to BullionStar
No Spread between the buy and sell price
Trade in and out of physical gold and silver
Minted by renowned refineries
99.99% metal purity
Contact
Help
