Essendie

I've had Royal Mail deliveries of PMs left behind a neighbours bin a few doors down from me. The photo was not a help because everybody's bins look the same. Apparently I signed for them. Also had deliveries (not PMs, but expensive supposed to be signed for items) left in my cardboard bin in the past couple of years. Royal Mail are useless nowadays. That said, DPD apparently 'lost' an expensive camera twice last month & neither has ever been seen again. They didn't lose the low value packages that came from the same place on the same day dispatched at the same time. It's never the cheap stuff that doesn't make it. Hermes/Evri are even worse, so I don't know where you go for trustworthy deliveries nowadays.

886 is the most uninspiring collection I've ever seen & wildly overpriced for no reason. Their 'trace chain' is £195, but you can get a simple silver chain like that from Tiffanys for £95. When Tiffanys is the cheap option for something so basic there is something badly wrong with your pricing. For Jewellery I think Tiffs has more gift/resale appeal than the Mint anyway. Try telling someone The Mint do jewellery & nobody cares. Everyone has heard of the 'blue box'. I like more minimalist, timeless styles, but they have to have 'something' about them. None of that has anything appealing about it at all. Edited to add, or less than £20 from Argos!

When my parcel arrives, I will have achieved my first silver target & have just over 1kg of silver 🙂

I had the weird book weeks ahead to have your coin dispatched (if it was going to be dispatched on the earliest date which I picked, it actually still wouldn't have been dispatched), but then just last week got an email to say it would be earlier than that. Weirdly, Chards don't seem to send an email to say they have dispatched orders, but according to the order details, it has been sent out this week.(it doesn't say which day)

Well, they do sell gold coins at this time of year, it's just they are made of chocolate:-)

F&M have cheaper delivery than some dealers & they are fast too. Plus they have fabulous customer service & you don't even need to show ID!

Until he passes away (which to be fair could be soon as he isn't exactly young) ALL new sovereigns will have Charles on them once the last Queen Elizabeth ones are gone.

People already trade & more people than you think would be prepared to trade in silver. Last time I got work done in the garden, I paid with a new pressure canner. I had a spare one & the guys wife wanted a canner. They even threw in a dozen fresh duck eggs as the canner was worth more than the work he did. That's in a city too, so it's not just rural trading that happens.

The ID thing is really annoying. I'm partially sighted so if you are 4 feet away I can't really see you properly so I'm not legally allowed to drive. There isn't much point going abroad when everything you see properly has to be within arms reach so I no longer have a passport. It's not like I'm hard to find, I'm on the electoral register etc.. but more & more people demand driving licences or passports to do anything.

Ooooooooooooh. Free delivery!

Don't feel bad, they charge £11 postage for a couple of 1oz silver bullion coins too. They were the only place my son could find the coins he wanted though, so I cried a bit & paid the postage which had the bonus of making Chards suddenly seem far more reasonable.

I don't get charged extra for using my debit card at the Royal Mint (or the Royal Mail.) The only place I seem to get a charge for using it is if I buy something that costs less than £5 or so in a corner shop. Everything is the same price whether I use cash, bank transfer or debit card. I'm fairly sure most of the debit cards issued by the big banks in the UK have either Visa or Mastercard on them (it doesn't mean they have a credit facility).

The Mint went all weird about my debit card a few months ago & it was because my bank decided to change from Visa to Mastercard. Once the new card was issued, it stopped being an issue. Meant no 'collect' coins, but most of my buys are bullion so I used bank transfers to get the coins I was after. For the whole time, no other place in the world had an issue with my old debit card, it was only the Mint.

Darn, I knew I should have closed that loophole down & boxed you in on the cost of postage! Let me guess, the postage on the free coin just happens to be exactly the same price as the coin + much lower regular postage for full price coin costs? Sigh... I was so close 🙂

You are good people stefffana. There aren't enough good people in the world, but you are one of them.

I'm not greedy, I'll just take the 1 free 1oz of gold & Chards can keep the ones that cost money 🙂

For me, it would depend on the dealer. If you trust C to actually deliver the coin, I'd pick C. If C was the sucky Royal Mint or other untrustworthy source, (who made me wait forever for my sons 1/10th gold Royal Arms coin, then sent me an email yesterday to say, "We don't have any & can't honour your PAID FOR ages ago order, so we'll send you a 2023 1/10th Britannia for the same price instead"), go with A.

Your poor staff must have arms the size of Robert Forstemanns legs if they have to carry stuff like that around!

You are Mary Berry! I knew I'd seen that hair somewhere before 😉 I'd guess Major Brendon METHERELL just because when I put it in google it tried to add Hereford on the end.

@TomCooke I opened my account last December, so I've had it nearly a year now. I haven't had any issues & have found it straightforward to use, but when you sell some back, it does take a couple of hours before the money is available to spend on bullion or move back out into your bank. This is my experience of using it. I cashed some in the other day to order a couple of 2023 1/10th oz gold Britannias & only had to wait about half an hour before it was available to spend, but it's usually a bit longer. I believe transferring it back to your bank takes a few days but haven't tried it. I also haven't tried selling any in the evenings or on the weekends. I just spend it on bullion - they stick the funds into your investment wallet when you sell digi, so it will only let you spend it on 'investment' (bullion) coins/bars, digi metals, but not proofs or other collect coins/things, unless you wait to get your cash back into your bank, then buy them with your card. I have to remember to keep a pound or so in there to cover vault fees which come out quarterly, but as I don't leave it in for a very long time or let it build up to a large sum they are under a pound usually. I'm using it for relatively small amounts (maybe £3-4k over a year). You can just bung the odd tenner or however much you want into your investment wallet to save it, but it makes nothing sitting there. I try to put it into gold if the price has dropped a bit then try to make sure I only sell when it's up a bit. I've done okay, definitely way better than a bank account would have earned on the same money in a year. You have to buy amounts of digi gold, silver or platinum from £25 up, but actually if the nearest fraction you can buy works out at £24 something, it will let you get that amount. I've stuck to gold so far. You just select your amount, stick it in your cart then check out. Very simple. I find for me, it's easier not to spend money on rubbish with this option, so if I'm thinking of impulse buying something, I'll stick the money into Digi gold instead. After all, it's money I have to burn or I couldn't buy the thing. (I don't go into debt to buy anything) The theory was I'd take it out if I really wanted the whatever it was. In practice, I never do really want the new headphones/camera/whatever enough to bother taking the money back out. I reckon at least half of what I have spent on gold & silver this year would have been wasted on junk that would end up in the back of the cupboard if I didn't put it in Digi gold & then turn it into coins. I find it also really suits me for the money not to be mixed up with household money in the bank by having it already 'spent' into the Mint. Then when I buy a coin, it's from my coin money. I've also got a Little Treasures Digi gold for my son that I put half his pocket money in, so now he has got into learning about simple investing, coin collecting & likes the fact he's made more on it than he has on the money in his savings account. I like the fact that it's really mine as far as the Mint are concerned, although displayed separately, so if he goes off the rails at 18, unlike his ISA sort of savings he won't be able to take control of it & waste it. I've seen too many lads spaff a deposit for a house on showing off for their first serious girlfriend or whatever to put too much into an unrestricted account for him. I would have to cash this out & give it to him & I can do that when I choose, as legally, it's mine. They probably aren't the best place if you have a bigger budget, but I particularly wanted somewhere I could save for my son in a way he couldn't touch (he's only 12) as well to save for coins. No other gold dealer seems to have that option. Adult accounts can hold digi gold, silver & platinum purchased starting at £25, kids account can only hold gold. Little Treasures can be set up as a monthly automatic £25 (min, or any amount you choose) or you can just add one off amounts whenever, or a combination. You (as the adult) can buy & sell from either as it all goes into your investment wallet. You don't have to sell it all at once, you click on the sell button & it takes you to a page where you choose how much you want to sell & it tells you what price you'll get, you can accept or not - once you accept there is no going back. If you already have £100 of digi gold, then you buy another £50, for a while you will have 2 lines showing as digi gold, but then it will get scooped up into one line per metal. They show you your gold, silver, platinum & Little Treasures accounts as a line each. I was told by staff that you can have more than one LT for kids if you have more than one you want an account for, but you probably have to phone them to set that up as I couldn't see a way to do it online. I'm fairly sure they have an app, but I don't use it so have no idea if it's any good. Their record keeping is a mess from the customer side & not user friendly. Every transaction on the investment side, whether you've bought a silver coin, or put money in your wallet, transferred money out or bought/sold digi stuff is dumped together in date order (newest first) in your transaction history & you need to open each transaction to see what it was for. You can filter by Purchase to cut down on clutter, but it will include all digi purchases as well as bullion purchases you had posted to you. I don't store anything in their Vault, but I suspect purchases sent to the Vault would also be mixed up in there. You need to keep your own records or spend forever ploughing through your transaction history to look things up. There is also no indication of which end of your purchases over time have been sold, so if you've bought some at 1300, then some at 1500 you don't really ever know which you sold & you don't get to choose, they just count all your digimetal of each type (where you can see) as one amorphous mass. I asked & got a 'dunno' (The Royal Mints catchphrase as best I can figure out) That can't be true, or they wouldn't be able to display a % change in value since purchase, as each bit was purchased over time for a different price, so they must have a record of it somewhere to base those calculations on. I'm not putting enough money through my account to bother to do the maths on it & find out. The change in value also gets messed up for a bit & means nothing if you sell often. e.g. If you sell £100 worth of gold, it will adjust it's figures as if you lost that amount of money from the value of your Digi gold for up to a couple of days until it sorts itself out. My personal opinion is that their sell to you gets adjusted up way ahead of their buy from you, but I'm a newbie at the metals markets, so it's just the impression I've got using the Royal Mint. I could easily be wrong. They seem to adjust it down fairly fast though if it's the price they will pay you, although they aren't so quick off the mark at night. If you were transferring large sums rather than a tenner here or a couple of hundred there just using a debit card, it can take a while using bank transfers, so I could see that getting frustrating as you could be watching the price go up while waiting for your funds to show up. I suspect there are checks that need to be done due to money laundering guidelines on larger sums too which slow it down, but I'm not lucky enough to have that inconvenience. It works for me & does what I want it to do, but I'm not trying to do anything in a hurry, dealing with large sums of money & I only put money in that I can live without. Hopefully that makes some sort of sense. I'm super tired so no promises!

I would prefer no 25 if possible. Second choice would be no 6.

There was a page on the Royal Mint website that said the Bullion Myths & Legends King Arthur coin would be released in December the other day, but I can't find it now. It was the one you got to when you clicked to sign up to register your interest which I did. This link says it goes on pre-sale on Tuesday 25th Oct (or contact your account manager if you spend enough to have one) https://www.royalmint.com/invest/wealth-management/king-arthur-2023-register-your-interest/

@LawrenceChard SABLE = Stash/Stack Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy. More than you can use/build before you die. Originally from the knitting community, but relevant in many collectors homes 🙂 edited to add. My maths skills are more than enough for this thanks Lawrence, I've been volunteering as an adult literacy & numeracy teacher for a few years now. I am also a little Chards customer. You may have heard of them, they have SHOCKING postage charges. 😉 Most of my purchases have been straight from the Royal Mint until recently, so I'm new to branching out looking for other reliable sources. I'm taking my time finding other places where they might even post out stuff the same year you buy it. I have run out of thanks apparently so consider everyone who didn't get one thoroughly thanked.

Some of it has as I've collected sets like the Modulars, Winter Village, Minecraft, the big Ninjago buildings plus a few Ideas sets etc.. including multiples of long retired Modulars 🙂 Right now though, it's a bit of a buyers market as everyone is broke, so they are pulling out their spare sets to sell en masse. Too many people noticed what happened to sets like the original Taj Mahal (before LEGO rereleased it) or Market Street & started buying up then hoarding the stuff to sell the second the sets were retired - a lot like the guys on ebay selling coins for crazily inflated prices. There is a cool little site where you can track the growth of some sets, including stats based future projections of value now everyone & their dog is thinking of LEGO as a possible investment. e.g. Scooby Doo Mystery Machine was a really good buy (£29.99 RRP in 2016, but I got it for £12) had grown 342.23% from RRP since then for BNIB, but has recently had a hefty dip because of the cost of living crisis. All my Scooby stuff did very well & I bought it all at lower than RRP anyway. Mostly the better things only increase around 10-15% a year over RRP. I think they price a couple of percent over what you'd honestly be able to get on the best day, but it's not that far off. I never bought LEGO to sell though, I just bought it because it made me happy. I'll be pruning my collection & only keeping my absolute favourites when the prices go up again, & eventually I'll turn the bulk of my LEGO into gold & silver.

I am a veritable font of useless trivia! Your gold pricing tool on the other hand is very handy thank you 🙂