The Globe and Mail reports in its Tuesday edition that if you do not own any gold, now is the time to remedy that. Globe columnist Gordon Pape writes that there are several ways to do this, depending on your investment preferences. One way is buying top-performing gold stocks on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Another way is to buy physical gold. Wafers, coins, bars -- you can buy real gold in several ways, but it comes with a cost. You will have to pay storage charges (unless you want to put it under the mattress, which would make for lumpy sleeping). There are insurance premiums. The seller will charge a commission. Then there are opportunity costs; physical gold pays no interest or dividends, so you are losing out on income your money could have earned elsewhere. However, for those who are preparing for the apocalypse, physical gold might be the only form of money people will accept. You can buy physical gold from the Royal Canadian Mint or several banks, including TD, BMO, CIBC and RBC. Mr. Pape cautions that gold has historically experienced periods of rapid price growth followed by years of semi-stagnation. He points out that while we are in a buying phase now, there is no telling how long this will last.