adamantio999

A trip down memory lane!  Unfortunately, I remember the last year before decimal currency 1970. Lovely coins, and a couple of the bank notes of the time
Total including the 10/- and £1 note = £1 . 17s . 4-1/2d  (One pound, Seventeen shillings, and four pence halfpenny)  Doing sums with old money was a nightmare!   Pence then was 'd' not 'p' 😂
For Bruce06, the farthing was demonetised in 1960. Before that with 12 farthings (3d) you could buy an ice-cream!

Taken from the telegraph today
A powerful force is stalking the world’s gold market. It is operating in the shadows. 
None of the normal footprints are visible on the London bullion market or the Chicago Mercantile. Retail goldbugs have not been buyers: ETF gold funds have been shrinking since December. The crowd is piling into the Bitcoin scam instead.
Yet gold has smashed through a four-year barrier around $2,000 an ounce, rising in parabolic fashion since mid-February, and hitting an all-time high of $2,431 on April 11. Is somebody preparing for an escalation of the shadow Third World War?
“It is not a Western institution behind this. It is a massive player with very deep pockets. I have never seen this kind of buying before,” said Ross Norman, a veteran gold trader and now chief executive of Metals Daily.
Gold has been ratcheting up fresh records against the headwinds of a strong dollar, a 70 point jump in 10-year US Treasury yields, and hawkish talk from the Federal Reserve. This mix would normally spell trouble for gold.
Whoever it is – or they are – seems insensitive to cost. Central banks do not behave like this. “They buy on the London benchmark and they don’t chase the price,” said Mr Norman. This rally is happening off books in the OTC market. 
Yes, China’s central bank has been adding to its declared gold reserves for 17 consecutive months, part of the gradual portfolio shift away from US Treasuries and European bonds by the Global South. 
Dollar weaponisation since the war in Ukraine has unnerved every country aligned with the authoritarian axis of China and Russia. None can feel safe parking money in Western securities after Russia’s foreign reserves were frozen.
Yet the scale is modest. The World Gold Council said central banks bought a net 18 tonnes in February: 12 in China, six in Kazakhstan and India, four in Turkey, partly offset by Russian sales. This hardly moves the needle.
The Chinese people certainly have been buying gold, creating traffic jams at the Shuibei jewellery hub. Precious metal is the only refuge from the property crash and the slump on the Shanghai bourse. Tightening capital controls make it hard to smuggle serious sums abroad. 
But this alone cannot account for the price surge, either. Mr Norman says the gold flow to Asia has been within normal bounds.
So let me take two stabs at this mystery, one geopolitical and one financial. It has been clear for three years that Russia, China and Iran are operating in collusion, each feeding opportunistically on each other. All three have fostered belligerent hyper-nationalism as a means of regime survival, and all aim to press their advantage against a fatally complacent West before the window of opportunity closes.
This menace on three fronts has reached a dangerous juncture. None of the major democracies have put their economies on a war-time footing despite the obvious threat.
The West has dropped the ball on Ukraine – or worse, it is preventing Ukraine from hitting Russian oil facilities – and has therefore left the door wide open for a knock-out blow by the Kremlin this summer. 
Iran has been emboldened by Putin’s military comeback. It is also flush with money. Joe Biden is so worried about rising petrol prices that he has turned a blind eye to sanctions busting, letting Iran sell as much crude as it wants. This has enabled Tehran to advance its pawns in the Middle East, and now to risk a direct missile strike against Israel. 
The third shoe has yet to drop but China knows that the West has run down its stock of military kit trying to contain these other two crises. Xi Jinping may never have a better moment to tighten the noose on Taiwan with a naval and air blockade, gaining a stranglehold over the West’s supply of advanced semiconductors that can then be used as a bargaining chip. How would the democracies respond to this?
There is a strong suspicion among gold experts that China is behind the surge in buying, building up a war-fighting bullion chest through state-controlled banks and proxies. But others, too, can see that we are living through a fundamental convulsion of the global order, and that the dollarised financial system will not be the same at the end of it. Gold is the hedge against dystopia.
However, there is a parallel explanation. Covid finally broke our spendthrift governments. The talk in hedge fund land is that some big beasts are taking bets against “fiscal dominance” across the West.
It is a collective judgment that too many countries have pushed public debt beyond 100pc of GDP and beyond the point of no return under prevailing economic ideologies and political regimes. Budget deficits have broken out of historical ranges and are running at structurally untenable levels for this stage of the cycle. 
Central banks will bottle it – under this scenario – in order to mop up issuance of treasury bonds. They will let inflation run hot to help states whittle down debts by stealth default. You might argue that this is what they already did by letting rip with extreme money creation during the pandemic.
The Bank of Japan is refusing to raise rates above zero or halt bond purchases even though core inflation is 2.8pc and the Rengo wage round is running at 5.2pc. This is what a debt trap looks like. With a debt-to-GDP ratio above 260pc, Japan cannot return to sound money without risking a fiscal crisis.
Olivier Blanchard, global debt guru and former IMF chief economist, once told me how this would unfold by the mid-2020s. “One day the BoJ may get a call from the finance ministry saying please think about us – it is a life or death question – and keep rates at zero for a bit longer,” he said. 
The European Central Bank is also in a debt trap. It continued to buy buckets of Club Med bonds even when inflation was over 10pc. This was patently a fiscal rescue for semi-solvent states. The ECB has backed off for now but will be forced to shield Italy again with fiscal transfers disguised as QE in the next downturn.
The Fed has largely monetised the Trump-Biden jumbo deficits. It now faces an invidious choice: either it stays the course against inflation, at the risk of a US funding crisis, a commercial property/banking crisis, and recession, all ending in a return to QE and fiscal dominance; or it cuts rates hard and fast before inflation is under control, also ending in fiscal dominance. Is gold sniffing this out?
Of course, the gold spike may be nothing more than wolf pack speculation by funds orchestrating a squeeze on bullion shorts through the options market, knowing that this sets off a self-fueling feedback loop. If so, the rally will short-circuit soon enough.
My bet is that a big animal with a Chinese accent is bracing for geopolitical or monetary disorder on a traumatic scale.

And where would gold be with that? 

I can’t, I’m addicted to the shiny stuff (can't help myself).
Also, I'm too young to stop, I'm in my late 30s and I've only started six years ago.
Also keep losing my stack in boat accidents forces me to start from scratches every now and then.

I can’t, I’m addicted to the shiny stuff (can't help myself).
Also, I'm too young to stop, I'm in my late 30s and I've only started six years ago.
Also keep losing my stack in boat accidents forces me to start from scratches every now and then.

Silver has always been the equivalent of buying an Alpha Romeo.  
Looks good when you first get it.  
Tarnishes badly 
Performs less well than advertised
 

With prices hitting ATH pretty much every other day, have you thought about a cut off point?
Me personally, I’m still gonna stick with the plan of at least a sovereign or 1/4 oz a month till retirement and then cash out that Sovereign or quarter per month to help out when the pension isn’t enough to cover my planned life style of slow cars and fast women!!

WARNING: TL:DR
Is the current gold rush sustainable?
A better question:
Are the sovereign debts of the US, EU, UK and China sustainable?
Gold is essentially the inverse of debt - when debt accelerates, gold goes up
We talk a lot about China buying gold but don't spend a lot of time fully investigating why. Is it BRICS? Is it a communist master plan of de-dollarisation? 
No, the CCP and Chinese financial system are doing it out of necessity, same as the rest of us. China has printed more money than the western world combined. The Chinese are in a desperate scramble to swap their currency for something a bit more, you know, valuable, like oil (Saudis) and gold
The local and regional banks in the Chinese system have been instructed to stack physical gold as a hedge against their property market and manufacturing sector. That's why there's a premium on physical gold in China - they don't just want it for political purposes, they need that gold for their survival
Despite the insanity going on in the USA with a POTUS more interested in pronouns than profits, it will be China's currency that goes to the wall first. When you hear commentators talk about de-dollarisation and the end of American hegemony, don't forget the studies show the USD will be the LAST currency to fail. The USD might not survive a great deal longer than other currencies but the Euro, Yen, GBP and RMB will collapse before the USD collapses. 
The concept of de-dollarisation is global, global financial collapse. Peter Schiff talks a lot about the collapse of the US but fails to provide a credible successor, other than the usual talk of currency revaluation vs metals (making gold and silver stupendously valuable like buying a mansion for a tube of silver Britannias)
Many have posted here before that the ATH for gold when adjusted for inflation is well north of $3,000. We can hit $3,000/oz without breaking sweat. 
If we use shadowstats or alternative metrics we can say the inflation-adjusted ATH is actually >$5,400:
https://www.bullionvault.com/gold-news/gold_price_inflation_010620119
We can go well beyond that with debt creation and inflation, with market expectations for debt to accelerate when the central banks cut rates. The debt burden is unsustainable. The only tool available to service that debt is to erode the real terms burden with inflation -> pump gold. It's not just sovereign debt but the robustness of corporate debt in general is starting to worry people. The commercial real estate debt component is a ticking time bomb
Rate cuts will be global. Nobody will cut before the Fed cuts unless they specifically want to encourage inflation (like Japan) or have an economic crisis, but once our global overlord flicks the switch, everybody else will likely follow. 
There is an argument for the BoE not cutting, allowing GBP to appreciate and using that as a tool to battle inflation. The penalty for that might be domestic recession and financial burden on mortgagees and borrowers, including the government itself. We'd also be living in cloud cuckoo land, identifying as a nation that can service its debts without inflation. The ugly truth is that inflation is essential to all sovereign governments due to the chronic corruption and mismanagement of previous regimes over several decades. 
If gold kept up its recent price action (adding 8%/month) for a full year then gold would be close to that $5400 inflation-adjusted ATH
Will gold keep up this pace? Theoretically it can but it would require some sort of additional catalyst IMHO
I have no doubt gold will continue to go up and the price is justified, my worry is does everybody else know this? How much of the recent price action is speculative and can be reversed vs sticky long term physical stacking?
If gold is the ultimate security, a stable store of real wealth, it's hard to justify rapid appreciations without expecting some sort of reversal. If a rapid appreciation (2.5x current price minimum) is justified then it tells us that the global financial system is close to the end times. That has all sorts of ramifications with the most likely one being a repeat of the 1930s (Great Depression - WWII)
We will get a better indicator this summer. The current price action while fun isn't of great importance. If gold continues to go up this summer then either we go to the moon when the central banks cut or it's been a paper scam, buy the rumour sell the news. A more gradual appreciation of metals is preferable to manic price action that causes global instability. High volatility does not favour us, it favours traders and the super wealthy (volatility = profit)
Gold might temporarily make you a king (Rafi Farber-style) but gold is not for getting wealthy, it is for preserving wealth

FUN FACT
Go back to the first page in this thread, which was dated January 2015 and the spot price of gold was £718. That's almost a £1000 spot price increase in less than 10 years, which is in the region of £100 year on year.
Not a bad return for anyone who was wise enough to invest in gold and to hold onto it!

I don’t get your thinking.
your sovs can now make you a profit of circa £180 each but you want the price to drop to buy more?
 

This is the GOLD thread my friend. When you sell GOLD of the CGT-exempt variety, you don't have to declare anything to anybody, zero taxes are due. When you sell BTC to someone you are legally obliged to record that transaction and the P/L in your tax self-assessment, which you have to fill in every year. With GOLD if you are in the same room as me I can just chuck it at you and job done. If we are in the same room and you want to send me BTC you have to pay the gas fees and/or wait longer than the average RMSD delivery time
BTC isn't a currency and it's never been money. If you want MONEY then you buy GOLD and SILVER, everything else is credit or magic internet money
Key point: With BTC you must declare both yourself and your trading partner to HMRC every 12 months and pay CGT or income tax depending on the nature of the transactions. What an absolute nightmare. You rely on the network, on connectivity, that you don't make a mistake and send your coins to Mars or North Korea, and your privacy is totally invaded. 

Should have a poll of 'Will we see £1600 or £1800' first.

Thanks both for your insightful technical analysis....

If I remember correctly Romania joined WW1 in 1916 (or in 1917?) alongside the allies (Britain, France, Italy, Russian Empire).
Her entrance to the war was however a disaster as she immediately suffered a combined offensive of the four central powers combined (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire), that shattered the romanian army.
Although Romania (with russian intervention) managed to continue the war, lost half of it territory, including Bucharest and some of the most fertile land.
The wheat and cattle seized by the Central Powers from Romania, helped them relieve their precarious food situation, providing them enough supply for six months.
 

If i am in a long term relationship with someone and you can afford to write it off then yes. If it's your parents then yes as they raised you. Other than that no IMO.
Don't think you will get it back. I am worse than most for a sob story and a big heart and have done it more than once and had to write 20+k off for a family member who didn't appreciate it.

Their debt.
If they are that silly to rack up a debt then they’ll do it again and expect you to bail them out.
Tough love is needed.

The guys at the bottom of the pyramid (the bottom 5%) are basically destitute. Their choice is between eating and heating not between gold and silver
The lower middle classes have been squeezed. They have less free income to spend on holidays, new cars, home improvements or gold. I'd guess fractional gold and silver are their preference
The upper middle classes have seen very little change as these folks owned assets and were perhaps debt-free before the pandemic. If you own assets (property, gold, stocks, etc) and have low debt then inflation and rates don't mean a lot to you
The upper classes are richer than ever before
The trend is to add more to the destitute and lower middle class population and destroy the median and upper middle class folks, leaving only the upper class and the peasant, "own nothing and be happy about it"
Here's what the Royal Mint said in Jan 2024:
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British Royal Mint sees record bullion demand in 2023 | Kitco News
The British Mint said that a record number of customers invested in precious metals products in 2023, increasing 7% compared to 2022. The Mint said that according to their customers, the need for safe-haven demand was a significant driver behind bullion purchases last year.
“Many global investors continue to move into precious metals investments to weather volatile financial markets,” the mint said in the press release.
Along with safe-haven demand driving markets, the British Mint said another major highlight from last year was an increase in digital gold sales as consumers bought smaller amounts of fractionalized gold.

The mint said 77% of customers bought bullion products smaller than the traditional one-ounce sizes. The 1-gram gold bar and one-tenth-ounce gold Britannia coin proved most popular in 2023.

The mint also said that its gold sovereign coin remained as popular as ever, and the silver Britannia continued to be its flagship bullion product, topping the most popular product list of 2023.
Looking ahead, the British Mint expects bullion demand to remain robust through 2024.

“The potential for central bank rate cuts in 2024 is boosting the gold and precious metals market, as the prospect of lower rates boosts demand for non-yielding assets. Traders and investors are increasingly pricing in a Fed rate cut some time in 2024, which could accelerate the price of gold alongside a weakening of the US dollar. The dual impact of this move could turbocharge gold beyond recent market highs, as recent geopolitical and economic uncertainty, alongside strong central bank gold buying, has kept precious metals markets elevated,” said Stuart O’Reilly, Market Insights Analyst at The Royal Mint.

Along with the shift in global central bank policies, O’Reilly said that geopolitical uncertainty should continue to support safe-haven demand as investors looking for protection from volatile markets.
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To answer your question it seems 1g, 1/10th Brits and the sovereign are the most popular purchases. 

I flew to London recently from Spain hotel booked with a card, 6 of us went to the Hotel bar ordered 6 pints of lager my round he pours them I produce cash and it’s not accepted card only.
No worries mate pub across the road it is.
His face was tripping him.

We are in the mess we are in today because too many people are happy to give up their freedom for a what they perceive to be an easier life.  One day your easier life will be your nightmare. 
I use cash as much possible.  If I sell something on FB it will be cash and the cash gets used in local shops, petrol stations etc. I only use a card when there is no other option. 
Using cash, gives you more control on what you spend.   If the OP was local, I would have no problem selling them gold for cash.   
By the way, there are still places in Hatton Garden where you can purchase with cash and sell for cash.

I would like to thank people on responding on my first post. Some of the advice is useful. Previously I have purchased & sold sovereigns . They sold at scrap price below spot price. It did not excite me. I am only investing in 24ct Gold . So Ounce coins such as Britania, Maple leaf, Australian Kangaroo, Austrian Philmoric mints or any 24ct bars are my choice of items. 
 
I am a tax paying citizen and have receipts of Vehicles bought & sold but who on earth would want to be under investigation of Hmrc ? Its a daunting investigation where all your bank accounts could be frozen until it’s completed. Also my bank charges 4 % cash handling fee. 

@Paul many of those dealers you listed do not accept cash at all, I called Baird , Gerrads, Atkinsons, and few more. And some of them do not offer counter service. Ideally I would like walkin counter service. 

Those dealers who can provide me invoice online with their bank account number can also be a good option. I am happy to keep transactions under £5000. 
@davegolddigger my dear Dvla does not care if you buy/sell and dealers accepts £millions cash in car  trading even with zero income proof. You can walk into car dealerships with unlimited amounts of cash and they will kiss your hands. You go to a Gold shop with over £10K . They will show you the door. They are completely different industries.  Its the Hmrc all gold dealerships are afraid off. Lets not divert the topic elsewhere
Much respect to all posters keep your advice coming:
 

I agree with @Coverte - It's important to recognise trustworthy new sources in the precious metals space. Here is Michelle and Kitco: