For your privacy and safety reasons, it is better to buy gold bars on physical stores. We may not be from the same country, so my answers may also not be accurate if I give some locations of where you can buy it.
There are tokenized gold. The one that I know of is PAXG. It has a marketcap of $534,238,220 and a good trading volume. Maybe you can buy some of this also. If you have high amount of money, I will recommend you to buy real gold and little of this tokenized gold.
PAXG huh? Something else to research. I would initially be concerned about the peg and the longevity of the Paxos company. It is pegged to gold and represents gold ownership........Till its not. I'll have to research. Buying physical gold sounds like a pain in the butt, and we cant trust paper gold ownership (ETF's, Certificates etc). Sigh, I figure something out. Thanks all.
I would not suggest buying tokenized gold. That is true, you have no idea about their lifespan.
Once they are gone, you're screwed and your gold token is gone as well.
Better buy actual gold, like in the form of jewelry as it is safer and handy as compared to gold bullions.
You can easily buy it from pawnshops near you, and you will know their reputation also.
You can buy from 14k,18k, 21k - depending on your preference here. There is marking on the jewelry to see if they are authentic.