whitesands1

Just want to make a point about how the Tv license has suddenly become more affordable in gold terms. 
 
April 1st 2023 1ozt of gold would buy 10.15 licences for struggling viewers. 
 
April 1st 2024 at current prices 10.5 licenses. (Even with a £10 increase in price to £169). 
 
gold is a store of wealth and purchasing power. 

ChatGPT was a tad little helpful to aid my reply, my query was 
"Can you give me a long drawn convoluted multi paragraph reply, that doesn't answer his questions, go's round in circles much like a politicians reply"

I have ssen  similar quetions many times before, on TSF and elsewhere.
Yhe answer is NO.
No real bullion dealer would do that. We make our money by trading. Buying and selling.
When spot prices go down, we might take a "book" loss on our stock unless it is fully hedged, but then we would also make a book gain if spot goes up.
When spot prices go down, lots of investors jump in and buy,.
Sales could be 2, 3, or 10 times normal levels, so a dealer' entire stock could be depleted in a few hours or days. I am talking here about the most popular volume sellers, which usually have the lowest premiums, not the more obsrure stuff with higher premiums.
Even in normal times, in can takes a few days at least to replenish stock.
This is not a normal time. There are lots of ordinary people investing in gold, and silver. Mosts mints cannot keep up with demand, and are not holding much stock, if any at all, so it is a case of waiting for more to be produced. Production cnnot just be doubled, or tripled or more overnight. Even if striking could be increased, more blanks are required.
Also currently, as I have been writing, the Royal Mint has been, and still is, in a changeover period between  2022 and 2023, and also between QEII and Charles III.  Many people want to buy some QEII coinsof both years, and others want new Charles ones.
We have to give the RM forecasts of our requirements months ahead, but if demand changes, the mint sell out quickly, and often to much bigger US and other foreign dealers. The UK market is only small compared with the internetional market, so the international market can quickly mop up any extra production.
This is more or less the same for all bigger dealers. 
Some, mainly smaller ones, stick their premiums up, which give them a big fat profit, and also makes their existing stock last longer.
Any bullion dealer who just sat on stock nursing its losses would  not stay in business for very long.
One other factor, and this mainly affects secondary market stuff, is the small investors, ordinary people often choose not to sell when prices are low. Dealers can't buy if people are not selling.
Would you sell some of your gold when prices just went down £50 per ounce? No, you wouldn't, which means you could have answered your own question.
😎

Sad times if there's to be no bullion 5sov 🥲

I sometimes see posts on TSF mentioning a "Half Proof Sovereign". Usually whoever wrote it intended it to mean a "Proof Half Sovereign", and therefore just bad syntax.
This even happened on the Chards.co.uk website, because someone had carelessly created a stock category Half Proof Sovereigns. When I saw it, I pointed out it was ungrammatical, nonsensical, misleading. It took some time before I convinced our team that it needed changing and correcting. Some thought I was just being pedantic.
But what would a half proof sovereign look like. It would have to be proof on one side, and non-proof on the other side. Clearly nonsense, and an impossibilty.
Or is it?
What does anyone make of this?:

I can confirm it is a gold sovereign, a "full" sovereign, as distinct from a half sovereign.
Although there are some imperfections on the reverse, it appears to be a proof coin.
The obverse, however, is clearly not a proof coin.
For now, I will throw this open for discussion and debate, mainly because it's getting late.

Mine has arrived, better late than never   
very nice - looks problem free - nice plain edge.  As Dave says above it is a nice satin/pearlesque like sheen to it  
One to keep hold of for the years to come 

On another point, it's just sinking in that I've spent £260 + postage on 2 Oz of silver.

Mine just arrived (postman was already with red non-delivery slip despite my dash to the door the instant I heard the knock).
Was worried given all the RM failures that have been reported, but capsule intact on delivery and coin... on initial inspection flawless. I got lucky with this and the first part of the pair. 
Given my record of sending back coins from the RM, I am really pleased something they sent out this time around managed to come through unscathed. But we shouldn't have to deal with this anxiety and disappointment.
Fingers crossed for everybody still waiting on delivery.

I loved these adverts as a kid, in the turbulent 80's interest rates on mortgages were around 15%,  peaked in 1979 at 17%.  10% on a savings account was a very attractive deal.   It's projected that UK interest rates will hit 4% by the end of the year.
 
 
 

So far I'm feeling it most in my car's fuel tank and with my business's costs.
I moved to a much more rural location nearly 2 years ago so expected to be paying more for transportation simply because I'm further away from everything but rising prices at the pumps have made those costs more noticeable. I am somewhat able to offset this though. Thankfully my business is based in the building on my property right beside my house so the commute is about 15 steps. I get all my outgoing orders collected these days so I don't have to drive around to post offices or UPS drop off locations. These services got a lot better at a good time for me. I feel its worth noting though as bad as I find this cost increase I'm still paying dramatically less in fuel now than I was spending on an annual train ticket to commute into London on packed trains 10 years ago. I'd take the fuel increase over that any day.
As for the businesses costs it seems pretty much everything across the board has risen in price from packagaing to equipment to the goods I buy and sell themselves. A lot of it is manageable because the items I sell have also risen in value so my prices were able to creep up without a bad reaction but there are some one off costs that are hammering the bottom line - more or less anything I need to import. I am doing my best to avoid those scenarios but the reality is there are some things (a lot of things) which aren't available in the UK and have to be imported.
My home energy prices have been fine. I have a pellet boiler and a couple of wood burners. Wood comes free via my mate who is a tree surgeon (very handy) and the pellets are cheaper this year than last. I expect electricity prices to be horrible come April but we're not there yet.
Food costs have been fine. I'm sure some things have gone up but I've offset a lot by growing my own fruit and veg as much as possible and selling the excess locally to pay for the growing costs.
Most things can be offset but its always a question of time/effort. I can heat my home for very little and grow my own food but it means spending a few hours a day extra working in the veg patch after spending the day working or giving up a weekend to chop and stack logs my mate drops off.

Here are mine in reverse order!  The obverses are perfect and like most of the other coins the skips appear to be on the reverses - I wonder why this is?  The fields on Victoria are certainly less lustrous.
The caps are VERY poor quality and don't show the coin off well at all, a lot of dust on the inside of the cap - I noticed this on a lot of the photographs.
The coin itself stunning but the presentation surely taken the shine off this release.  More than half a grand for £70 worth of Silver but in my opinion still going to be key coins.  I really just wish the capsules allowed for a real WOW factor. 

Does this look better in silver than in gold?

?

Here are mine in reverse order!  The obverses are perfect and like most of the other coins the skips appear to be on the reverses - I wonder why this is?  The fields on Victoria are certainly less lustrous.
The caps are VERY poor quality and don't show the coin off well at all, a lot of dust on the inside of the cap - I noticed this on a lot of the photographs.
The coin itself stunning but the presentation surely taken the shine off this release.  More than half a grand for £70 worth of Silver but in my opinion still going to be key coins.  I really just wish the capsules allowed for a real WOW factor. 

Yes mines exactly the there is some haze on the reverse which does not look good 

Just received my coin and wasn’t overly excited to have a look at the condition so here it is - a few marks and what concerns me more is the shine isn’t there like most silver proof coins it’s kinda not polished if you know what I mean. 

There's not a great deal of excitement about this coin and yet it was most eagerly awaited.  I noticed comments about the "haze" on the reverse of the coin - I had a quick look at mine and thought the obverse was the usual brilliant field but the reverse less so.
I will take a photograph on the two together and post later on.  Such a shame that there are a number of reasons why the release seems to have been a let down for coin collectors.

Can’t wait to see what these will look like in 175 years…glorious, I can only imagine…perhaps much like the original 1847 release…Portrait inbound. Appreciative of being a part of this historical remake. Enjoy the moments of why we are a close knit coin collecting, numismatic community…

When I saw a 15+ page thread appear in just over a day, I thought I'd missed another new release!

😀

Now you're telling me I was in a non-existent queue trying to buy a non-existent product!
"Yesterday" being Monday 7th February, there was a "release" of the Gothic Portrait coin, although as much discussed in it own thread, they all seem to have been sold or allocated prior to release, with the result that:
Instead of TSF members and others complaining because they were waiting in a big queue, they were complaining that there was no queue!
😎

Probably best just to wait for the bubble to burst and buy later at a reasonable price, no ?
The RM have a model that is currently working for them. Classic designs, free advertising by forums, the media and groups, over-priced and popular. It won't last.
(Historically the RM would sell off unsold stock at a discount and the majority of proof coins would lose value the minute they left the Mint. Hardly a success story. Once the market becomes over-saturated and sales start to return to old levels is when they should re-evaluate their business model).  
It's only going to take a few duff designs for the current frenzy to tarnish (or milkspot) and we'll be back to the same old, same old.
 

Yes, that was the joke!  

I have never seen anything in any of the Coinage Acts stipulating that the Royal Mint could only produce or release coins dated the current year.
On the contrary, it seems to have been standard practice to continue production with the current years dies after each year end. It wold also be very inefficient if the main production section of the factory had to stop work on 31st December each year, discard or destroy all the current dies, reset all the machines with new dies for the new year, beofre restarting production. This would also cause a huge spike in the workload of the engineers and machine setters, who might then be under-utilised for the rest of the year.
Prior to decimalisation, to discourage hoarding, the production of pre-decimal coins had its dates frozen, to 1967 in the case of pennies, halfpennies, brass threepences, sixpences, florins, and halfcrowns; and 1966 in the case of English and Scottish shillings. Mint bags of these denominations often have labels date stamped 1968, 1969, and 1970; possibly even 1971.
New decimal coins were produced and stockpiled in advance, but dated 1971. This did not apply to denominations with equivalent values in both systems, so 5 and 10 pences were dated from 1968, and 50 pences from 1969.
Mintage figure tables often state that the mintage figures for each year do not guarantee that the coins listed were dated the same year as they were produced. I seem to recall that old Royal Mint reports carry the same caveats.
Most 1925 London Mint gold sovereigns were struck in 1949, 1950, or 1951.
It can be seen for the above, that there is nothing particularly unusual about striking coins with dates different from the actual production or issue dates.
In other countries, particularly smaller states and island nations, where the coinage requirements are relatively low, it it even more common for the same date to be used and re-used for many years.
While @GoldDiggerDave might think 2022 dated coins being produced and issued in 2024 surprising, it would not be a total shock.
After all, late last week I received a brand new Henry VII coin!

Better photos to follow.