GoldStatue

I'm sure they were £585 on release, so they charge you an extra £40 and force you to make it yourself, inflation is really hitting the Royal Mint hard this year 😀 You picked a great time to go with it being a special reverse sovereign year on the SYO.

Be honest, how many times did they have to re-mint them? 😀 Nice pickup, I've always wanted to do that tour and have a look in the RM vault of coins!

There's plenty more time for the Royal Mint to release another SOTD so don't tempt them 😀 I don't think the piedforts have ever been that popular but pretty much anything with the special design on them will sell out eventually. I was a bit confused by the 5 BU sovereign, I just assumed it was going to be the matte finish but it didn't actually say that on sales page and the photos weren't that helpful.

I only found out recently that high inflation is pretty bad for UK government debt when compared to other governments because 24% of its debt is index linked, which is way higher than most other countries, for instance for the US government it is 7.5%. To answer the question of thread, never really a bad time to responsibly buy gold, in the UK buy sovereigns or gold Britannia's, try to be disciplined and stick to your collecting/stacking strategy as best as you can.

Thanks for the info. When I first thought about buying gold one of my justifications was the demand for gold jewellery in the Asia/Indian regions. The threat of VAT on gold in the UK is one of the reasons why I wouldn't mind finishing off my base stack sooner rather than later!

Exactly amazon and ebay work out the P&P so they should be able to work out when someone is trying to dodge selling fees by inflating the P&P costs. Another oddity I found when selling some larger ticket items on ebay was that people with zero feedback bought them. At first I thought I was going to be scammed out of the sale and have to claim it back but the sales went through as normal. Not 100% sure why they did the purchase like that but it is really heart in your mouth time when you are the seller.

I guess if your country doesn't have a government mint that makes sense. Is there a preference for any particular brand of bar in Asia, is it all packaged PAMP Suisse?

Ebay taking their fees from P&P, it seems like ebay has lost their faith in humanity! Ebay auctions that were cancelled showing up in sold listings. People who win an auction and message you saying they'll have the money in a few days to pay for it, why bid on it in the first place?

I was wondering if there is a new monarch does that mean all of the mintage limits for QEII coins get voided due to the obverse changing? So the Royal Mint can re-issue all their best selling coin designs with the new effigy, so more Great Engravers/Beatrix Potter 50ps/special design sovereigns and so on.

I would have thought they would have sold out in about 15mins. I'm sure the Royal Mint releasing them on a Thursday instead of a Monday has a part to play in that.

The eyes are quite hypnotic too!

They don't produce as much circulation coinage as they used to as coins are getting used less. I think some years they don't bother doing some denominations, so it might not be much of a big deal for them to re-mint all their stock with the new effigy. The actual effigy itself from a coin collectors point of view is going to be important, what happens if the next monarch breaks with tradition and says they want to be right facing instead of left, people still mention Edward VIII and his vanity over the decision he made about that in the 1930s. Whether the monarch wears a crown or not is another important decision that they'd need to make.

I find the privy marks don't show up as well on sovereigns as other coins, purely because the coins are tiny in the first place and I have to really squint my eyes to see them. Even though I'm not a big fan of the Royal Mint churning out a marginally different proof sovereign design each year I can easily see the intrinsic gold value going up so much in the next 10 years that it would comfortably pay off any premiums the Royal Mint is currently placing on them.

You can guarantee the Royal Mints profits will soar as all the completionists will have to go out and buy a ton of new coins.

I wouldn't count on that staying the only proof sovereign with a privy mark for too long, you know the Royal Mint will flog those privy marks to death.

Looks like someone is already flipping those Winnie the Pooh SYO 50p on ebay for £29, pays for the entrance ticket at those sort of prices, makes the trip a bit more affordable!

For me coins all the way when it comes to liquidity for re-selling, Sovereigns or Britannia's, they are just so well known in the UK. Certain gold bars have a reputation for being faked, like the Lady Fortuna PAMP Suisse bars, ebay is probably flooded with them! I guess ultimately as long as you have a little something tucked away no matter if its coins or bars you are on the right track 👍

But how much did you have to spend in Sainsburys to get 35500 nectar points? Half the shop 😀 I always see people in the USA talking about earning ebay bucks when they purchase coins off of ebay, sounds like they have a good rewards system over there. Over here Nectar and clubcard and the like seem to have gotten a lot worse over the years.

Or maybe the OP is extremely rich and wants to literally collect every sovereign ever made 😀 Either collecting all the special reverses or all the monarchs portraits seems to be the gateway drug into collecting sovereigns. I'd just be careful about what theme you decide to collect as many of them contain sovereigns that are nigh on impossible to acquire.

Has anyone heard any rumours on what the next great engravers will be? I remember it was leaked well in advance about the Gothic Crown.

To be fair the Yale isn't much of a looker in the first place 😀

I've never really pigeonholed myself when it comes to buying coins, I don't really see myself as a stacker/collector/investor/hobbyist just a little bit of all of them. My biggest change is my attitude towards modern coins, I just looked at the rate the Royal Mint have been churning them out and the amount of releases that are re-strikes of original coins and it really started to put me off. Some of them look great but I hope to switch all my modern proofs over to more historic original coins eventually. I've never been a massive fan of silver coins and I'd say that view has got a lot stronger over time. Every time I see milk spots/the premiums/re-sale value of proofs below retail price/VAT it just backs up my belief it is waste of time.

It's a fair point because the subject area must have the same scope as something like art history, so there won't be any shortage of material for the degree. You would think if you can get a degree in ABBA or the Beatles you can get one for coins. I see the ANA do an online diploma revolving around grading/detecting fakes and the modern minting process, not really a degree though.

Congratulations on the new house and swift gold sale. This seems like a good example of easy to liquidate gold coins in action, buying sovereigns and Britannia's all the time might seem boring, but it certainly made the sale here look straightforward.

I always find it funny looking at the tracking on parcels being sent to the UK from the US, they seem to get sent all over the country before crossing the Atlantic. I seem to remember one being sent from the west coast to the east coast and back to the west before being flown over the pond.