@ASB I appreciate that you didn't say that. I just put it out there because of the abundance of negative sentiment towards gold. Owning physical is like an insurance policy or savings fund you hope to never need. I think coins like Sovereigns take some of the difficulty with owning physical gold out of the equation. Whilst I don't think an apocalypse is imminent, central banks globally are playing a rather dangerous game, one which they may rapidly lose control of, and in some regions of the world, gold is held for that very reason, to 'store' wealth. That said, I'm not expecting a complete breakdown of the monetary system. Gradual and slow decay, perhaps.
In the event that not even gold is of use as money, there's precious little else that will be, since that'll be an effective reversion to barter until things stabilise sufficiently for money to re-establish itself. Yet like SO stated, it's always been seen as money, and there's also the possibility of the USD losing its reserve currency status. In that event, you could still make use of gold-holding firms as long as you are willing to accept the counter-party risk, which in their case may be pretty low.
However, aside from that scenario, if you're using gold (amongst other commodities, including silver) to diversify, gold holding firms, trackers and gold mining outfits are better options.
If people thin they'll be super rich because of it then I think they haven't really thought it through - unless they know someone who'll sell brains for gold. Then gold will definitely help keep the zombies at bay.
