Can I hold a non-electronic copy of my bitcoins/wallet (physical keys)?

[towelswan]

I still don't quite understand what the physical keys are.  Are they a string of numbers/letters?  How many are there per wallet?  Is it possible to locate them somewhere within the wallet.dat file and print them?  Or say write them down by hand?  Such that if all my electronic backups of my wallet.dat were destroyed, I could input they physical keys into a wallet.dat shell, and recover my coins.

[robcat]

The physical keys you're referring to are the private keys (i.e. 256-bit numbers) of your addresses. Of course you can write them down (or memorize if you have a good memory). See https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Private_key

[vit1988]

google for "paper wallet"

[towelswan]

Cool, thanks.  I actually just watched a video tutorial on creating an offline paper wallet using bitaddress.org, so it makes a good bit more sense to me now.

One other question - if I create a wallet using a regular bitcoin client (say Bitcoin-QT), where can I locate my private keys for that wallet?

[DannyHamilton]

One other question - if I create a wallet using a regular bitcoin client (say Bitcoin-QT), where can I locate my private keys for that wallet?

Help->Debug Window->Console

dumpprivkey 1yourbitcoinaddresshere