The advice given by
@Red Leg &
@tarbe is solid in my opinion, but I'm certainly no expert. I got into coins through my Mother, she worked in a bank all her life, and all manner of coins & currency came through. She gave all she accumulated to me when my Son was born, and she also told me "collectibles", will only ever be worth spot", and in a down economy her words are true.
My Son, during his school days & college built himself a savings & investment funds by following the metal scrapping plan. He would stock pile (& still does) any manner of metal, lead, copper, tin, brass, aluminum, stainless, titanium, silver, gold, platinum, palladium .... When prices rise he sold/sells , and converts that money into ingots & non-collector coins. Of course his "scraping" method is a young man's game, but he has done well with it.
It isn't a precious metal, but the one metal he has made the most profit from has been Copper, and by my observation is due to selling/trading based on *spot or true market value , as collector value is irrelevant.