The Yard Mint

22/09/2026

Half a tube of silver goes in a drawer. Four years later it comes out looking blotchy, and the owner assumes the money has gone with it.

Usually it has not. The Royal Mint publishes the answer itself. Of milk spotting it says it "doesn't devalue your coin as it is predominantly desired for its precious metal count". It is a surface effect linked to the annealing process used in striking, not corrosion, and the ounce underneath is unchanged.

What does cost you is trying to fix it. Removing a spot cannot add a single milligram of silver, and it can leave hairlines across a mint finish that any buyer reads as damage. We would rather buy a spotted coin than a polished one, and we will say so when you ask.

Our new guide goes through what a buyer actually checks on silver and in what order, why an intact twenty-five-coin tube is one item to verify while the same coins loose are twenty-five, what a dealer looks at on a bar before reaching for the scales, and the one difference between a silver Britannia and an American Silver Eagle that has nothing to do with the silver in them.

https://yardmint.com/blogs/insights/sell-silver-uk?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sell-silver-uk&utm_content=facebook_photo

21/09/2026

Free storage is not free.

A vault is a real building with real guards, real insurance and a real audit bill. Somebody pays for all of it, every month. When a provider advertises free storage, that cost has not vanished. It has moved.

There are exactly four places it can sit: the monthly fee, the deposit, the withdrawal, and the gap between the buying and the selling price. Most comparisons only look at the first one.

Here is the uncomfortable version, and it applies to us as well. If one provider charges noticeably less than everyone else across all four lines at once, that is a claim rather than a bargain. It usually means the storage is pooled rather than specific to you, or the insurance is thinner than it sounds, or the cheap part is a loss leader and the money comes back on the exit.

So we published ours. Monthly storage free at present. Free to deposit metal bought from us. Ten per cent to deposit eligible metal bought elsewhere, and ten per cent on a physical withdrawal. Two per cent on a cash withdrawal. An indicative spread published on the same page.

We vault four things: the tenth-ounce gold Britannia, the one-ounce silver Britannia, the one-ounce American Silver Eagle and Goldbacks. We do not vault jewellery, scrap or bars, and we do not vault Sovereigns, although we buy them readily.

Read the full guide:
https://yardmint.com/blogs/insights/gold-vault-storage-uk?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=gold-vault-storage-uk&utm_content=facebook_photo

19/09/2026

Five different numbers attach to one Goldback, and they are not interchangeable: the gold value, the published exchange rate, the UK retail price, collector value, and what somebody will actually offer you later. Our UK buying guide takes them apart one at a time. https://yardmint.com/blogs/insights/buying-goldbacks-in-the-uk

14/09/2026

Selling gold coins in the UK: Sovereigns, Britannias and silver.

A full Sovereign is not a quarter ounce of gold. The Royal Mint publishes it at 7.98 g and 916.7 fineness, which works out at about 7.31 g of fine gold, so it takes roughly four and a quarter Sovereigns to match one 1oz Britannia.

The new guide covers what a dealer checks and in what order, which coins move fastest in Britain, which of yours to part with first, and the one thing you should never do to a coin you intend to sell. It also says plainly who should not sell to us.

Yard Mint buys bullion coins, bars and Goldbacks. We do not buy jewellery or scrap.

https://yardmint.com/blogs/insights/sell-gold-coins-uk?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sell-gold-coins-uk&utm_content=facebook_photo

13/09/2026

Three numbers decide what your gold is worth, and the headline gold price is not one of them.

The price you see quoted is a wholesale benchmark for large bars delivered in London, set in US dollars per troy ounce. Before it tells you anything, it has to be converted into pounds, converted from troy ounces into grams, and adjusted for purity. Unless you are holding a 999 bar, you own less gold than you own metal.

Here is the part most people get wrong. A gold Sovereign weighs 7.98 g, but at a fineness of 916.7 it holds about 7.31 g of fine gold, which is about 0.235 troy ounces. Not a quarter. Four Sovereigns come to roughly 0.94 oz, so four will never match a one-ounce coin, and across a jar of twenty the shortfall against a quarter-ounce assumption is worth more than a Sovereign on its own.

We will also say the unpopular part. Whatever figure you reach is a ceiling, not an offer. Verification, insured carriage in both directions, the price risk a buyer carries until the metal resells, and the buyer's margin all come out of it. Any dealer who implies otherwise is recovering it somewhere you are not looking.

What we can do is take the guesswork out of the first half. Our sell page now shows a live buy rate per gram and per troy ounce, recalculated automatically from our own vaulted pricing, so you can do the multiplication at your kitchen table before you speak to anybody. Treat it as an anchor rather than a settlement.

Full guide, with the hallmark standards and the Sovereign arithmetic worked through:
https://yardmint.com/blogs/insights/what-is-my-gold-worth-uk?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=what-is-my-gold-worth-uk&utm_content=facebook_photo

12/09/2026

Most guides to selling gold are written by people who want to buy it from you, and it shows.

This one goes the other way round. How a dealer actually arrives at a number. Why that number sits below the headline gold price. Which qualifying British coins HMRC treats as exempt sterling currency for Capital Gains Tax. And the six mistakes that cost sellers the most, starting with the commonest one: working out your proceeds from the spot price.

It also says the thing we would rather you heard from us than found out afterwards. Online vaulted platforms run far tighter spreads than physical dealers do; BullionVault's current FAQ says its gold dealing spread is typically 0.2%. If the lowest possible round-trip cost is your only priority, that is the honest answer.

Read it here:
https://yardmint.com/blogs/insights/sell-gold-and-silver-uk?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sell-gold-and-silver-uk&utm_content=facebook_photo

10/09/2026

Gold may be insured at home and is insured in the vault. The journey between them can fall outside both.

Royal Mail's current high-value-goods page says Special Delivery Guaranteed offers compensation up to £750 and Sameday includes cover for loss or damage up to £2,500. Both are published ceilings set by the service, not valuations of what you send. Cover away from home varies by policy and may require a separate extension.

We have written up what each route covers, what a vault will and will not accept, and why buying metal already vaulted removes both the journey and the deposit fee.

One honest note: we do not vault jewellery, and the guide says so plainly, with what to do instead. Check your own policy and Royal Mail's current restrictions before moving anything.

https://yardmint.com/blogs/insights/transporting-gold-to-a-vault-uk?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=transporting-gold-to-a-vault-uk&utm_content=facebook_photo

09/09/2026

Most people buy a bar because it looks like the efficient choice. It usually is, above an ounce. Below that, the reasoning quietly breaks down.

Checked against our own list today: a tenth-ounce gold Britannia cost less per gram of gold than a five-gram bar, and sat within about one per cent of a ten-gram bar. Indexed to the one-ounce bar at 100, the range runs 123 at one gram, 113 at five grams, 105 at ten, 100 at an ounce. Ratios move with the market, so check on the day.

There is a second difference that decides it for a lot of UK buyers. Britannias and Sovereigns minted in 1837 or later are sterling currency, so they are exempt from Capital Gains Tax. A gold bar is not, so a gain above the annual allowance is chargeable.

The full guide covers what each stamp on a bar is for, cast against minted, what LBMA Good Delivery actually means, five mistakes we see, and who should not buy a bar at all.

This is general information, not personal tax or investment advice.

https://yardmint.com/blogs/insights/buying-gold-bars-in-the-uk?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=buying-gold-bars-in-the-uk&utm_content=facebook_photo

08/09/2026