I haven't seen James Turk's goldmoney mentioned, but IMO that is the safest option for bullion if you're not going to store it yourself. It's a bit more expensive than kitco say, but it's probably worth it for the peace of mind.

http://goldmoney.com/en/index.php 

Also worth a look is CEF, central fund of Canada, which is basically 50% gold 50% silver. But the great thing here is that if you work through the tax treatment forms it works out to 15% long term capital gains not the usual 28% "collectibles" rate.

Baires, FWIW, I once asked Ted Butler what he thought of SLV vs kitco - this was after one of his pieces railing about unallocated storage (such as kitco & perth mint) - and he said (perhaps surprisingly) that he was a big fan of SLV. I assume this is still the case now that SLV lists the bar serial numbers on their site.

Personally, I started out with kitco, but GATA is always warning against them (they don't like what Jon Nadler writes either), and it's true I don't really know what would happen if kitco went bankrupt one day, would I just be stuck in a long line of creditors hoping to get something back? - so I'm now diversified across kitco, CEF, goldmoney & SLV.

(Peter Schiff seems to have a thing for Perth Mint certificates, so that's another option)