Still nothing on this?  I am curious whether it's even a good idea to use precious metal; that's like printing money on money. It becomes confusing at that point to track the value of the medium on top of the crypto value.

Why not use regular metal coins similar to the ones seen on this site: http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Physical-Litecoin-LTC-Collectable-Real-Digital-Coins-Like-Bitcoin-s-little-brother-Round1-Troy-999-Silver/1020505_1620607103.html

We've been using coins like that in the Air Force forever as just simple tokens to be collected. Many of them are of very high quality.

The coins themselves need not be of valuable material in order to serve this purpose. That gives the illusion that the coins are dual purpose and the really shouldn't be. If you want to own silver bullion, buy silver bullion and keep it 'til the apocalypse or hand it down to the next generation.

The only reason I haven't designed my own coin and sent it to be made by a company like makecoins.com is because I wouldn't want them having possession of the secret key. I am looking for other methods. Any guidance?