The U.K.’s Royal Mint, which traces its history back more than 1,000 years, ran out of 2014 Sovereign gold coins as prices near a six-month low led to “exceptional demand.”
The mint, based in Llantrisant, Wales, expects to have stocks of the coins again by the end of January, it said in a statement e-mailed today. It has full availability of gold and silver Britannia bullion coins, it said. Gold dropped to a six-month low of $1,182.27 an ounce in London on Dec. 31, capping the largest annual decline since 1981.
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“Due to the low price level, we’re currently experiencing high demand,” Daniel Marburger, a director at Jewellers Trade Services Ltd. in London, which buys and sells coins and bars, said today by phone. “We also have a lot of companies restocking” coins at the start of the year, he said.
Gold for immediate delivery rose as much as 5.6 percent from the six-month low set on Dec. 31 and traded at $1,222.37 an ounce by 4:45 p.m. in London. Prices, which reached a record $1,921.15 in 2011, slumped 28 percent last year. The metal priced in pounds slid 29 percent last year and was at 742.52 pounds an ounce today, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
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“We are currently experiencing an extremely high demand for British gold coins from countries like Italy, Greece and of course the U.K.,” Jewellers Trade Services’ Marburger said in a separate e-mail. “We’ll have to wait for the Federal Reserve minutes tonight and then we might know where the price will go for the next couple of weeks,” he said by phone.
Full article: U.K. Royal Mint Runs Out of Sovereign Gold Coins on Demand (Bloomberg)
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