Mint
Minted bars refer to the manufacturing process that is applied to create them. The process begins by heating gold material in a furnace until it turns to a molten slurry. During the heating process, all unwanted impurities in the slurry are removed until only molten gold of high purity is left, most often at around 99.99%. The molten gold is then poured into moulds, usually in the shape of large bars, where it cools and solidifies. The solid gold is then inserted into a mill that rolls the gold into panels with a uniform dimension. Afterwards, the gold panels are inserted into a blanking press that punches blanks out of the gold panels. The next step involves the weighing of each gold blank to ensure that it is neither underweight nor overweight and those that pass this test are then polished for them to obtain a shiny surface. The last stage involves the minting process where the gold blank is inserted into a minting press that presses its die with huge force to transfer the design from the die onto the gold blank. The result is a minted bar. The newly minted gold bar is then inspected before being sealed in a transparent tamper-proof protective package.
The Royal Mint
The Royal Mint is one of the oldest and most respected government institutions of Great Britain. Its long operating history, by some estimates over 1100 years, and coupled with its production of many of the world’s most famous coins, like the gold sovereign, has contributed to making it one of the best known and renowned mints in the world. Since 1279 when the mint established its operation in the Tower of London, it has been responsible for the production of coins of the United Kingdom. Its reputation for excellence and trust was further reinforced when Sir Isaac Newton became Master of the Royal Mint. During his tenure at the Royal Mint, he was responsible for moving the British pound to the gold standard.
Today the Royal Mint is not only responsible for minting coins used for circulation in the UK, but is likewise producing official coinage for more than 60 countries in the world. However, the most important and renowned coin ever to come out of its minting presses has without doubt been the sovereign gold coin which even today is being produced at its minting facility in the town of Llantrisant, Wales, UK. The accuracy and quality of the modern gold sovereign coin is the same as it was two hundred years ago, containing 22 karats of fine gold and weighing exactly 7.98805 grams. The popularity of the gold sovereign has likewise not changed, as confirmed in 2014 when the Royal Mint ran out of 2014 sovereign gold coins due to exceptional demand. The gold sovereign is without doubt one of the foremost gold coins ever to be produced and the fact that almost 100,000,000 sovereigns gold coins have been minted since 1957 is a testament to their excellence and trustworthiness. The reputation of the gold sovereign coin as “the chief coin of the world” will live on for centuries, as savvy investors will always prefer to keep a portion of their wealth in gold coins which are secure, liquid and trustworthy.