In June 2002, I showed my subscribers a little-known way to buy gold for $250 an ounce... That was $70 off the market price at that time. (Boy, I wish we could buy like that again!) We made about 80% in two years.  For my next gold trade, in June 2003, I recommended readers buy gold coins. But I didn't want to buy bullion coins like Krugerrands. I wanted to buy something with a little rarity... That way, you have two ways to make money: if gold goes up and if the "premium" over melt value goes up. Honestly, I was a little embarrassed to bring up the idea to my subscribers... Back then, gold was thought of as loony, not to mention gold coins. My readers probably thought I lost my mind. Thankfully, we got it exactly right. Both the price of gold and the rarity premium rose...  I recommended 100-year-old Saint Gaudens coins. They contain roughly an ounce of gold. You can buy them graded, authenticated, and encapsulated in plastic. My readers bought coins graded "MS63" – that's rare but not ultra-rare – for $490 per coin. Today, they're selling for $1,765 and we still hold them. That's a 260% gain and counting. Then, in July 2005, I told subscribers to my high-end letter about three gold stocks. One of those three stocks was Seabridge Gold. Shares of Seabridge are up over 500% since I first recommended them. We sold half for more than 1,000% and we're holding the rest. Here in 2009, gold is catching on. What's the right way to play it? Let's size it up the same way we did for the three trades above...  What's the lowest-risk, highest-reward way to play gold now? This is exactly the moment that you can make a fortune by buying coins even rarer than the Saint Gaudens I recommended in 2003... that means coins grade MS64, MS65, or better. These ultra-rare coins can go up fivefold, sevenfold, even 12-fold in a gold bull market. Since bottoming in 2001, these rare coins are only up about 100%, according to PCGS (the Professional Coin Grading Service). In other words, ultra-rare gold coins have risen less than the price of gold... so far. 
But I expect that will change very soon... The chart shows how crazy prices can get during gold bull markets. I recommend you start looking into rarer gold coins – ones costing at least twice the price of gold – if you want to have the potential to make huge returns with limited downside risk. As you can see from the chart, your upside potential is ridiculously high. But even if the price of gold falls, people won't sell 'em, so your downside is low. Remember, gold has increased in value faster than these coins. So their "premium" to the price of gold has actually shrunk. Now, higher-end gold coins are at their lowest premium to their meltdown values in the recorded history of the grading services (which go back to 1986). If you're looking to own gold, you have a lot of choices... gold bullion, gold ETFs, gold stocks...  But when I size up the upside potential versus the downside risk, I want to own the ultra-rare gold coins.  Good investing, Steve  Editor's note: Steve Sjuggerud is a regular contributor to DailyWealth, a free investment newsletter focused on the world's best contrarian opportunities. We write with a simple belief in mind: You don't have to take big risks to make big money with your investments.  Sign up today to read more investment ideas from Steve Sjuggerud.