Rise in Gold Causes Massive Shortages

With the ongoing financial crisis, the demand for gold bullion coins is rocketing to new heights. Initially, gold bullion coins were mostly bought by collectors or gold bugs, but the current worries over the stability of the banking sector and an expected increase in inflation has encouraged regular retail investors to buy gold coins as a means of investment and security to protect their assets.

This sudden gold rush in coin demand is creating massive shortages as mints all over the world are not able to match supply with the increased demand, dealers and mint officials declare. Due to the scarcity of supply, the gold premiums are hiked to as much as 7% above the spot gold price.

This situation surfaced precisely at the time of the collapse of Lehman Brothers last September. This undoubtedly pushed the economy further into the cellar.

Executives from the leading national mints are saying that demand for gold coins is twice or even three times more than what the US mint are able to produce. This news is coming from gold dealers that can purchase directly from the government’s mint.

The statistics of gold bullion sold by the US mint over the last two years shows the increasing trend in its demand. The US mint has sold over 193,500 ounces of its popular American Eagle gold coin within the first seven weeks of this year. This is almost the same amount it sold in the whole of 2007 and approximately the same amount as shipped in the first six months of 2008.

Experts say that the increased demand for gold coins is nothing less than astonishing as the coins purchased today would be completely sold of the next day. This trend is reciprocated by all the other mints. Due to this extraordinary demand, almost all dealers have stopped taking new orders. Most dealers are having trouble getting their orders out even within three to even fours

The surge in gold coin demand could very well mean an optimistic hike in gold prices, but no one can ignore the fact that the mints are unable to meet demand. This is having effect on the premiums the retail buyer is paying for their gold supply. Dealers are being forced in many cases to increase their premiums since the prices they are paying are also elevated.

The demand in gold coin is a global scenario which is proved by the shortage of the world’s most popular gold coin, South Africa’s Krugerand. The Rand Refinery in Johannesburg said that its demand was above its maximum capacity. Even after they doubled the mints from 10,000 ounces to 20,000 ounces per week, they were unable to meet demand and eventually fell short in its supply.

Johan Botha, the head of precious metal sales at the Rand Refinery said that there is demand for more Krugerrands from international investors especially from the UK, Switzerland and Germany. He said that even if they increased their produce to 30,000 per week, the market would absorb it in no time.

The New Zealand mint declared that it’s per day business equaled the business for a month last year, and their mints were mostly sold to global investors. There are struggling to meet the current demand levels in bullion coins, declares the head of gold sales of the New Zealand mint.

If the common public understood how little gold their really was on the market there would be a frenzy on trying to obtain it. Realize that all the Gold in the World can fit in one large oil super tanker. To apply a gold standard to the US dollar, one ounce of gold would be worth over $50,000 since the government has been printing money like it was a hobby. Also there is about 4.5 billion ounces of gold in the World market with well over 6 billion inhabitants in the World. Not enough real money to go around for everyone. With the huge increase in inflation which is coming in the next 24 to 36 months, gold buying will continue to become a phenomenon which I believe has yet to have peeked