LawrenceChard

I think premiums will ease slightly, but whether you think it is noticeable is another question. If you read any of my advice about investing in precious metals, I generally favour and recommend gold. the simple reason for this is that investment gold is exempt from VAT. It is quite easy to buy gold coins at 2% to 5% premium in modest quantities. Silver is different. It is taxable at 20% VAT, and this fact makes it a far less attractive investment in my opinion. the same applies to platinum and palladium. Because of silver's low price relative to gold, it costs a higher proportion to process and manufacture. As an example, let's assume a mint can make a one ounce gold coin for a production cost of £5, that's about 0.38%. Also assume it costs it only £1 to make a one ounce silver coin; currently that's about 5.5%. Now for a further calculation for silver: Base 100 Index Add 10% 110 Mint Selling Price Add 10% 121 Dealer Selling Price Add VAT 1.2 Retail 145.2 With spot silver currently about £18.27: At those figures, the mint would be making about £1 per coin in big volume sales, and the dealer about £2 per coin in small quantities; that's a modest profit for small deals. For volume sales, price breaks usually apply, which might bring the final price closer to 140 or a 40% premium. Even if the mint and dealer were to work on ultra slim margins, the final price could hardly come down as low as 135, for a 35% premium. You might also notice that we @ChardsCoinandBullionDealer tend to use and show % premiums for gold, but monetary values for silver, partly because it relates more closely to the cost pricing, and partly because the VAT distorts any % calculation. Here is a sample quantity break pricing table for the most popular UK silver bullion coin, new 2021 silver one ounce Britannia: Quantity Premium Price Per Item (Exc. VAT) Price Per Item (Inc. VAT) Total (Inc. VAT) Est UK Delivery 1 £4.85 £23.15 £27.78 £27.78 £3.50 5 £4.40 £22.70 £27.24 £136.20 £6.00 10 £4.10 £22.40 £26.88 £268.80 £6.00 25 £3.80 £22.10 £26.52 £663.00 £6.00 50 £3.75 £22.05 £26.46 £1,323.00 £11.00 100 £3.50 £21.80 £26.16 £2,616.00 £27.60 250 £3.30 £21.60 £25.92 £6,480.00 £30.60 500 £3.10 £21.40 £25.68 £12,840.00 £49.20 1000+ £3.05 £21.35 £25.62 £25,620.00 £99.40 ... and a UK dealer comparison: Price Comparison Against Other UK Bullion Dealers - Updated at 04-Aug-2021 04:46 Qty Chards (Excl Delivery) Chards (Inc Delivery) B* G* AB BB RM UKB GER 5 £27.38 £28.58 £30.60 £29.64 £30.96 £31.53 £31.34 £30.84 £30.12 10 £27.02 £27.62 £29.88 £29.52 £29.16 £31.08 £30.57 £30.12 £28.80 25 £26.66 £26.90 £29.64 £29.16 £28.80 £30.65 £30.06 £29.90 £28.08 50 £26.60 £26.82 £29.40 £29.04 £28.32 £30.22 £29.63 £29.81 £27.96 100 £26.30 £26.58 £29.04 £28.92 £28.08 £29.83 £29.32 £28.81 £27.60 250 £26.06 £26.18 £28.92 £28.80 £27.84 £29.59 £29.32 £28.68 £27.48 500 £25.82 £25.92 £28.80 £28.80 £27.60 £29.23 £29.32 £28.60 £27.24 1000 £25.76 £25.86 £28.56 £28.68 £27.00 £28.93 £29.32 £28.60 £27.24 Yes, things were similar in the Credit/Banking/Sub-Prime crisis. Regarding silver Philharmonikers, these do not normally sell in voulme in the UK because they are not CGT exempt. This means most UK dealers would want a higher profit margin to make it worthwhile to stock them. If collectors just want one single coin, then an extra pound would not deter most buyers, but a volume investor would want a much lower cost price to offset the possible CGT. Also they are not likely to be as easy to liquidate. As it so happens, I think we have a relatively small batch of them due to arrive in about a week, so it will be interesting to see how their price compares. Lastly, it is also possible to legally avoid the VAT if you buy for "bonded" storage, in Zurich for example. Sure, it only really works for reasonable volume, and there are storage charges, but 20% VAT pays for about 30 years fully insured storage.

Definitely subtle, took me a minute to see it. One subtle change deserves another: A big improvement!

For the past month, my gut feelings have been that the supply and delivery situation for popular UK gold and silver products has been easing, and edging towards normality. For most of the last 15 to 18 months, there has been big demand for investment bullion products worldwide. In the UK, this has naturally been particularly strong for British CGT exempt coins, such as gold sovereigns, gold Britannias, and silver Britannias, with demand also overflowing into gold and silver bars. Any secondary market coins we bought in this period have sold out within hours or days. Naturally, many investors prefer these because of lower premiums, which has increased demand for new, fresh from the mint, products. In the past month, we have received significant deliveries of 2021 gold sovereigns, gold Britannias, and silver Britannias. We now have spare physical stock of 2021 silver Britannias, having received more than a tonne in the last few weeks, with more in the pipellne. 2021 gold sovereigns we have had spare physical stock for about 2 out of the past 4 weeks, with more due in soon. 2021 gold Britannias. Again, we have had a number of large deliveries, but not quite enough to fill all existing orders. This should also change by mid August. This was just one of our recent silver Britannia deliveries (the monster boxes, not Mandi). TSF stackers might be interested to know that there is often, but not always, slowdown in hot weather and holidays. In combination with more readily available stock, this may mean slightly lower premiums on some of these coins over the next month.

Following the recent announcement: Design student wins Queen's Platinum Jubilee emblem competition. https://www.leeds.ac.uk/news-arts-culture/news/article/4884/design-student-wins-queen-s-platinum-jubilee-emblem-competition We created a visualisation of the design on a coin: It adapts very neatly to a circular coin design. I can hardly wait to see the Royal Mint version of it.

You can find the item listing if you select "completed" items. The legend does show "100 POUNDS", so it is not a gold-plated silver version. It will be base metal, either brass or gold-plated, and almost certainly made in China. You can probably find them on AliBaba for about £1 to £2 each, but I have not looked. Speechless? Don't be, this is ebay!

That large BP looks like it's on the reverse to me! 🙂

He probably is, mainly Tesco, and the local police. It is one way of protesting or highlightling the point about legal tender not necessarily being spendable or redeemable, and he does not use violence to make his point. Agree with him or not, it is difficult not to have respect and sympathy for his endeavours.

Thanks, I did see it, but there was already a blog post with more detail. In fact, I think we also did an interview with "Tesco Man" which is on YouTube.

No: https://www.chards.co.uk/blog/can-i-spend-commemorative-coins-in-shops/476

Reverse look about normal. These are the same two coins, with the good one on the left, and faulty one on the right: TSF Members are invited to play "Spot the Difference"

Complete with logo of your favourite coin and bulion dealer! 🙂

The best dealers now include price comparisons on their popular bullion product pages, as for example: https://www.chards.co.uk/2021-gold-sovereign-uncirculated-coin/13295 QUANTITY BREAKS UK DEALER COMPARISON MORE INFO TERMS & DELIVERY Price Comparison Against Other UK Bullion Dealers - Updated at 02-Aug-2021 04:50 Qty Chards (Excl Delivery) Chards (Inc Delivery) B* G* AB BB RM SP UKB 5 £324.41 £325.81 £329.90 £329.40 £330.80 £330.73 £331.46 £326.20 £329.84 10 £324.11 £324.91 £329.10 £328.60 £330.00 £330.23 £329.85 £325.88 £328.85 25 £323.49 £323.93 £328.40 £327.50 £328.50 £329.73 £328.99 £325.39 £328.18 50 £322.88 £323.20 £327.70 £326.70 £326.90 £329.23 £328.25 £324.73 £328.18 100 £321.50 £321.77 £327.00 £325.60 £325.40 £328.93 £327.62 £324.24 £328.18 250 £321.04 £321.36 £326.70 £325.20 £324.60 £328.53 £327.62 £323.43 £328.18 500 £320.88 £321.15 £326.30 £324.80 £324.60 £328.23 £327.62 £323.43 £328.18 1000 £320.73 £320.97 £325.80 £324.00 £324.60 £328.23 £327.62 £323.43 £328.18 Some dealers appear to tweak their prices, so that their single piece price is about 50p cheaper than @ChardsCoinandBullionDealer, after postage, probably because most comparison sites/pages show single piece pricing by default. Dealers who feature so called "free postage" usually work out more expensive for any quantity over 1.

You can say that again! 🙂 Well spotted. I also noticed that when I got home, after rushing at the office. It took me 3 attempts to delete the duplicate photos, but TSF seemed to be intent on "helping" by restoring them.

... and the reverses looked normal according to Doug ... Any guesses about the cause? ...apart from c**p RM QC Weak striking, worn dies?

... and it looks OK.

"A coin I desperately want to add to my collection and am umming and arring about purchasing the one in the below video. I’m not to sure on it polished/cleaned/brushed perhaps? The obverse seems worse than the reverse to me. Any and all opinions welcome and would be gratefully received." I was trying to use the "Quote" function without including the video, but it is almost impossible to do so, unless you create a line break under the video when posting. "polished/cleaned/brushed" It is difficult to tell from the video, but some wear and tear is generally to be expected on a century old coin made for circulation. It is what it is. It does not look obviously polished, and if it has been cleaned or brushed, it does not really matter if it has been done carefully enough to be undetectable. Whether it is genuine would be of more concern, although that is even harder to tell from the video. I presume it is the seller's video, not yours, otherwise adding some still photos would help.

Quite typical hype from a typical American dealer. (I presume they are American, but after spending about a minute scanning their linked page, home page, and about us page, I could not find their address to enable my to confirm my guess. I feel sure it will be there somewhere, but that's poor web design, in my opinion) The writer completely omitted any mention of platinum, possibly because their compnay does not sell much of it.

From memory, the Royal Mint does seem to have an erratic profitability record. I have read the RM report, or at least the most important and less waffly bits of it. I may need to check it further for any mention of quality control. In my opinion, there should be no excuse for what seems to be a lack of awareness on their part about the problem. The net profits generated in the last year do not sound excessive bearing in mind the turnover (revenue), and the fact they have a monopoly over the production of United Kingdom coins. I suspect some of the apparent RM indifference to quality control problems may be because its management believes its own propaganda and hype.

On Friday, we noticed another production error problem on 2021 silver Britannias. We will be taking photos on Monday, and post them here.

Dear Chris, Will do. I guess someone asked me a question on the Photos Only section, and I answered it directly. I will re-read the "how to...", and look for what I got wrong.

Don't forget to tag people in using @(username) to get their attention, for example @Gordy. Acceptable Forms of ID One from each list may be required. For more information, visit HMRC. Proof of name Proof of address Current signed passport Utility bill (gas, electric, satellite television, landline phone bill) issued within the last three months Original birth certificate (UK birth certificate issued within 12 months of the date of birth in full form including those issued by UK authorities overseas such as Embassies High Commissions and HM Forces) Local authority council tax bill for the current council tax year EEA member state identity card (which can also be used as evidence of address if it carries this) Current UK driving licence (but only if not used for the name evidence) Current UK or EEA photocard driving licence Bank, Building Society or Credit Union statement or passbook dated within the last three months Full old-style driving licence Original mortgage statement from a recognised lender issued for the last full year Photographic registration cards for self-employed individuals in the construction industry -CIS4 Solicitors letter within the last three months confirming recent house purchase or land registry confirmation of address Benefit book or original notification letter from Benefits Agency Council or housing association rent card or tenancy agreement for the current year Firearms or shotgun certificate Benefit book or original notification letter from Benefits Agency (but not if used as proof of name) Residence permit issued by the Home Office to EEA nationals on sight of own country passport HMRC self-assessment letters or tax demand dated within the current financial year National identity card bearing a photograph of the applicant Electoral Register entry NHS Medical card or letter of confirmation from GP’s practice of registration with the surgery But having a beer and waiting until Monday sounds like a good idea! 🙂

Brilliant, thank you!

A 10 Baht Cast Gold Bar tdc 965 The initials were not quite clear to me, and I asked so if anyone can contribute a better guess, please do so. Thanks to @CollectForFun for providing the answer! This Niton test result confirms the gold purity as accurate. Weight 10 Baht, or on our metric scales 152.74 grams Dimensions: 57.5 x 23.50 x 7.06mms

More translation: Using Google lens, the wording in the two line of the oval cartouche translate as: Silk Shop of Gold or Diamond Shopping Mall or Petchthong Mall and Sirikorn University or Siriporn University or Korn University or Complete It seems that Thai can be quite a difficult language, some words having different meanings in different contexts. Additional information: Siriporn is always a female name. Thai ศิริ (sir) meaning "glory, splendour" and พร (phon) meaning "blessing". Google lens translated it as Daughter. Alert: Searching for "Siriporn" in Google with "Images" selected fails to find any gold bars, but does find an interesting selection of other images, some probably because of the last 4 letters. 🙂

I think they only use that in the dodgy places for the tourists. Oil is better, sweet almond mixed with a little lavender, jasmin, lemon grass, or ylang-ylang. Coconut is also good. The baht is or was also called a tical, so when I next see my friendly local Thai masseuse, I will ask her if she would like a tical, and see what happens. 🙂