Following the entire "developing" world (where faith in paper money "backed" by $1 quadrillion in derivatives is at times questioned, and instead the people, for some inexplicable reason, fall back to hard currency equivalents) scrambling out to their local precious metal dealers to find "out of gold" signs virtually everywhere, yesterday it was the US Mint's turn to announce it had halted shipments of the popular one-tenth ounce gold American Eagle coin as it had run out, following a surge in demand (we expect this shortage will soon spread widely to traditional one-ounce denominations shortly).
Things in the US have gotten so bad, not only are most online dealers backlogged weeks and months in advance for most PMs (as the CEO of Texas Precious Metals explained in detail), but respected bullion vaults are also now on the verge of running out of inventory. As Reuters described, "Michael Kramer, president of Manfra, Tordella & Brookes (MTB), a major U.S. coin dealer in New York, has been inundated by orders from existing and new wholesale and retail customers. "It's panic. This is one of the busiest times in quite a while. People think gold's at the lows and they want to take advantage."
It was only a matter of time before the last bastion of paper money, London, also succumbed to the soaring demand for physical, and sure enough moments ago Bloomberg reported that the "Britain’s Royal Mint, established in the 13th century, sold more than three times more gold coins this month than a year earlier as prices declined."
Sales are more than 150 percent higher than last month, according to Shane Bissett, director of bullion and commemorative coin at the Royal Mint.
