If you’re ready to try gold investing, whether as a way to see short-term gains, to protect against inflation, or to have some money saved back in a hedge fund against a financial crisis, you need to learn what you’re doing before you get started. Luckily, the resources for potential gold investors are many. Before you start spending money, spend some time looking around at some of the following resources.

The Internet is, as always, a fantastic resource for investors of all sorts. If you’re getting ready to put some money into gold, it can be an excellent idea to first spend some time on the web. You can find opinions from experts and forums from people just like you who are investing in gold for a variety of reasons. Of course, you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet, but you can get some excellent information if you look in the right places.

There are also lots of great books out there on the history of gold investing and on how it works for current investors. This can also be a good place to get information that might be a little more stable. Usually these published works are going to have gone through an editing process, and they’ll usually be the work of more than one expert, so you can trust the opinions in the books a little more clearly.

You can also find out about gold investing from gold dealers. This might seem counterintuitive – a little like getting all your information on a certain make and model of a car from a car dealer – but it actually makes sense in a lot of ways. Gold dealers are usually also in the business of investing gold for monetary gain, but they do it a little differently from you. If you can find a reputable dealer, you’ll be able to get solid information. If you combine this information with your own smarts and the information you’ve found on websites or in books, you could end up with a very good idea of what to do with your gold.

Plus, you should always take into account the opinions of experts that are published in the financial and investment arenas, whether on major websites or in magazines. Again, everyone is going to have a slightly different opinion, so you have to take that into consideration. Using all this information, though, you can form knowledgeable opinions of your own.