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Royal Mint sells 1kg gold bullion bars – at £25,000

In the latest of its bullion sales, the Mint now offers 1kg bars – the size of an iPhone, yours for about £25,000

Stack of Gold Bars
To mark the first anniversary of its bullion service, the Royal Mint will offer 1KG bars Credit: Photo: Alamy

A year after the Royal Mint started to offer gold and silver bullion sales direct to investors, it has increased its range to include the Kilo Gold Cast Bar.

Buyers – as with all the Mint's bullion services – can have the bar delivered to their homes or offices by insured post, or they can store it in the Royal Mint's own Welsh vaults, for a fee.

How big is the Kilo Bar?

Although it weighs 1,000g the bar is small: 11.8cm long, 5.3cm wide and just 0.8cm thick.

That's roughly the size of an iPhone 5.

How much does it cost?

The Royal Mint's online platform, royalmintbullion.com, is a live trading platform, so the price you pay will vary according to the gold price at the time of purchase.

At today's gold prices that's between £24,000 and £25,000.

Does the Royal Mint offer good value for gold bullion purchase?

The Mint offers great pedigree and security. As it says, the organisation is around 1,000 years old and its vaults near Cardiff Airport are guarded by the Ministry of Defence.

But you may well be able to buy the same quantity and quality of physical gold more cheaply via other services.

• The cheapest way to buy Royal Mint Gold? Not from the Royal Mint

This is because the Royal Mint also distributes its gold bullion through other brokers, and it does not want to drive these out of business.

So if you are prepared to trust lesser-known brands you may get the same bar for less elsewhere.

Our previous research has shown that, where selling gold coins, the Royal Mint has a markup above the current Gold Spot price of as much as 13pc.

What does it cost to store gold at the Royal Mint?

Storage fees are charged at 1pc per year based on the average daily market value of your total stored holding.

You can sell your holding back via the Mint's bullion platform.

What are the other routes for investors who want exposure to gold?

For investors who do not want to buy a specialist gold fund another route is to use an exchange-traded fund, such as ETF Securities’ Gold Bullion Securities, which tracks the movements of the gold price.

Shares in ETFs can be bought and sold via stockbrokers, just like any other share, and held within Isas.

You can own physical gold bullion through trading platforms such as The Real Asset Company (therealasset.co.uk) or BullionVault (bulllionvault.com), where bullion can be bought or sold in small units and stored in secure vaults on owners’ behalf.