Bullion bars or bullion coins are actual gold that you can hold in your hand. Paper gold, on the other hand, most often represents the price of gold, but only as a paper asset.
In other words, a sheet of paper serves as a stand-in for actual gold. Paper gold has no intrinsic worth, whereas genuine gold does. Physical gold is rare and impossible to duplicate. The ratio of exchanged paper gold to physical gold is said to be between 200 and 250 to 1.