I like buying silver or gold ETFs (such as SLV or GLD) as opposed to buying the actual physical metal. Don't have to worry about safe keeping or buying a chunk of tungsten on accident. Lots of liquidity and low fees. Plus you don't get killed by the spread like you do from gold/silver dealer.
Only downside is if you are buying the metal because you are hedging against an impending apocalypse, you may not be able to get much for your paper ETF certificates. Though in my opinion if said apocalypse actually happened, we'd have a lot bigger things to worry about and I don't think silver or gold would actually have much demand. People would want things they could actually use.