(i)  numismatics has become a specialized sector for collectors of historic and rare coins;

(ii) commemorative coins have been struck for such diverse occasions as the Olympic Games and the sixtieth anniversary of Emperor Hirohito in Japan;

(iii) investment in coins from the gold standard era, particularly the Napoleon, the Sovereign, the Double Eagle and the Vreneli (Swiss), became popular initially during the 1930s after the collapse of the gold standard itself and they often traded at a premium in the years after World War II. An added incentive was created by the rising gold price of the 1970s offering profit from both price and premium (the Vreneli premium was sixty per cent in 1979 and fluctuated between two and thirty per cent in the 1980s). The attraction has been less in recent years, with a weak gold price, and premiums have sometimes been non-existent;

(iv) newly minted coins also became popular in the 1970s. Initially this took the form of restrikes, according to demand, of such historic coins as the Austrian 100 Corona and the Mexican Centenario, which enabled investors to buy gold coins at close to the spot price. They were followed by the bullion coin, pioneered by South Africa’s Krugerrand in the early 1970s and later joined by Canada’s Maple Leaf, the United States’ Eagle, the Australian Nugget and the British Britannia. The minting of Sovereigns was also increased so their premium came down close to those of bullion coins. The bullion coins, all from government mints, became a significant segment of gold demand in the highly inflationary days of the late 1970s and early 1980s, taking up to fourteen per cent of all gold coming on the market. Forty-four million Krugerrands alone were minted. The volume of coins, however, eventually saturated the market and the three per cent premium at which the mints hoped to sell to wholesalers could not always be maintained. Often bullion coins trade at little over the spot price; indeed, sometimes they are marginally under or at ‘melt’. For a while this encouraged investors to watch the premiums of other coins, notably the Swiss Vreneli, and switch out of bullion coins into these historic coins at opportune moments. But gradual disappointment with the price halted this trend. Bullion coin fabrication in 1996 hit a low of just under 63 tonnes (2 m oz), compared with a peak of 348 tonnes (11.2 m oz) in 1986, then improved somewhat to reach 133 tonnes (4.3 m oz) in 1999. This recovery was fueled partly by concerns over potential problems in the international financial markets as the new millennium dawned but did not continue into 2000 as ‘Y2K’ fears were not realised and large quantities of coins were sold back into the secondary market. As a result, fabrication in 2000 fell to a record low of just 45 tonnes (1.43 m oz), before staging a modest recovery the following year, although this was largely on the back of a post September 11th related rise in demand.

(v) the fifth category is modern collector coins, which are proof issues of bullion coins or other well-known coins such as the Sovereign, or special limited issues by some countries. The gold coin, thus, is no longer money in the pocket whose price is fixed but a commodity on which the investor can win or lose.