Put a one ounce gold bar and a one ounce American Gold Eagle side by side on a table.
Identical weight. Identical metal, near enough. Both perfectly legal in an IRA. Both going into the same vault, in the same building, guarded by the same people.
The coin costs about $100 more.
Which sounds like an easy decision until you learn what that hundred dollars is actually buying, and then it becomes a genuinely interesting one.
Because the difference is not craftsmanship or beauty or patriotism. It is liquidity, recognition, and the ability to sell exactly $9,400 worth of gold in December without doing something drastic.
That last one matters more than anyone tells you, and it does not become relevant until roughly age 73.
So let's do this properly.