A few things off the top of my head about buying gold and gold related investments for novices.
The conventional advice is to start off with bullion. I'm ambivalent about that because it's not as straightforward as they make out. You buy some physical and what are you going to do with it? I became quite paranoid about mine and got to eventually burying it in the yard. I used to drink a bit in that period and I deliberately buried it in the strangest spots I could think of. Multiple spots. Then, because I was paranoid I didn't keep a map of where I put it. The upshot was? When I came to dig it up to sell it I was never quite sure that I got all the spots. To this day I suspect one of the stashes is buried at a house I no longer live in. Then, before you sell it you have to transport it. Circumstances at the time meant I had to use a courier to get it to my dealer. The courier knew what it was because of the weight - he actually said it, so then I s**t myself over that, wondering if he was honest, because he didn't particularly look it..
Paranoia - you're living with an elderly family member and you imagine someone getting wind of your stash and torturing the oldie in front of your eyes before you cough up the location. Not so weird, because three members of the silver stackers forum were robbed of their physical in suspiciously targeted burglaries. Gold bugs tend to have paranoia as a preceding condition anyway.
Coins, collectables and numismatics. I found these to be losers when I came to sell. Unless you're willing and able to chase knowledgeable private buyers you will not get back the premium you paid for them. Big hassle shifting your stuff that way. Getting a premium for a collectable coin from a dealer - forget it. My Melbourne dealer, whom I consider ethical, cannot offer more than spot price, if that. So unless you have a fetish for collectables go for the rawest brute bullion bars or coins.
But I would not even do that if I bought today - which I wouldn't. If buying physical today I would go for allocated pooled metal. You never see it. Because its pooled, fees are minimal. Obviously you have no home security issues. When you come to sell, its modern - do it in the internet or with a phone call and the money appears in your account. To view one example, my dealer was:
https://www.goldstackers.com.au/bullion/types/pool-allocated/
I'd also consider buying through an etf on the stock exchange (code::GOLD) but not so sure about that, never done it.
Best for me by a long shot has been gold miners - you're a part owner of gold in the ground. The first stage in which I did this was early 2000's and I focused on explorers, developers and small 'growing' miners for maximum 'leverage'. I primitively understood that there was a fair bit of risk, so I read what I could about the individual companies and used a scattergun strategy - small amounts into maybe 20 companies. They took me for everthing I had - one by one they all went down, either into administration or hyperinflation of the shares. I couldn't believe all these smiling respectable looking directors were deceiiving self-serving white collar phoneys. These guys were just scoundrels dressing up hyper risky bogus enterprises as investments for the gullible while they pulled six figure salaries, free options and got to call themselves managing directors instead of mediocre geologists, prospectors or accountants which is what they rightfully were.
My second foray into mining shares went much better. Got off to a late start because, while I was watching some gold miners make money in 2014, I put it down mostly to a low Australian dollar. Also there was bitterness cynicism and fear to overcome. Anyway I gradually built positions in established gold miners with fairly well demonstrated records of profitable years. My one deviation from this cautious approach proved the rule - I put 30 grand into Dacian Gold (DCN) before it fully ramped up production - boom, cratered, turns out the m.d (recently replaced) was, shall we say, 'imaginative'.
But the others have gone quite well and I continue to view them as investments in gold that pay conventional dividends.