Olympic hopefuls get the chance to fence with Commonwealth veteran

Funding from the London Mint Office has enabled Henry de Silva to teach young hopefuls

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YOUNG fencers from the Isle of Man who could be Olympic stars of the future are training with a Commonwealth fencing veteran.

The Island's young fencing team has received funding from the London Mint Office which has enabled them to train with Henry de Silva.

Henry, 77, lives in Andreas and has lived in the Isle of Man for the past 15 years.

He started fencing at the age of 14 and won three county championships, the Commonwealth veterans gold medal - twice - and a number of country titles across New Zealand, Australia and parts of the Western Hemisphere.

Henry said: "I saw how involved the London Mint is in the Olympics and thought as a long-time customer they might want to support the Isle of Man's youth fencing team. I was delighted when they stepped forward and made a donation."

The Isle of Man fencing team brings together students, aged between seven and 17, from 38 schools across the Island once a week. Fencer Thomas Corlett, who is 17 and from Douglas, has been tipped as a UK Olympic star in the making after recently winning three national competitions.

Nick Hart, spokesperson for the London Mint Office, said: "We're always keen to support talented young individuals. Mr de Silva's suggestion about the Isle of Man Olympic hopefuls caught our attention.

"We're extremely proud to help where we can and will be keeping in contact with their Commonwealth master to hear how the squad progresses."

Click here to see and order the newest coins and ingots of the London 2012 Olympics

The new World Gold Report 2010 is out now!

At the moment we are seeing the biggest gold rush in history of mankind! Experts predict the gold prise to rise even further and collectors all over the world buy gold coins,as long as they are still affordable. The London Mint Office has now received the new World Gold Report 2010, which gives important insight into the gold market. You can download your copy here, by clicking the link below and saving the report onto your computer or printing it out:

Click here to download your copy of the World Gold Report 2010

Please also have a look at our actual gold coin offers and make your reservation, before they are sold out or the gold price increases even more.

Click here to see and order gold coins now

The William & Kate Engagement Commemorative,

issued to celebrate the Royal event of the decade,

supports The Diana Award for Inspirational Young People

The Royal event of the decade has been announced on the 16th of November 2010: HRH Prince William and Catherine ('Kate')Middleton are engaged and will get married next year. A William & Kate Engagement Commemorative has been issued to celebrate this event - layered in pure 24 carat gold and with a genuine blue sapphire in tribute to Diana's engagement ring, which William has given to his future wife in tribute to his beloved mother.

Applications received on the first day of the announcement have exceeded all expectations and the mintage is strictly limited to 40,000 commemoratives only, at the first issue price of £4.95 (plus £1.95 P&P). All successful applicants will automatically be given the first right to also own further commemorative issues of the Royal House of Windsor Collection. Please find more information on www.londonmintoffice.org

The London Mint Office will donate all net profits of each sale to The Diana Award for Inspirational Young People which was established in 1999 by the Diana Memorial Committee, reflecting the personal interest of Diana, Princess of Wales in helping and supporting young people. Interested readers will find more information about this award on www.diana-award.org.uk

GOLD continues to reach all−time highs

The rising price of gold has been in the media again. However, the media tend to only report remarkable price shifts such as record highs - a more balanced view will show that gold has actually been on the rise for some time.

Statistics from the World Gold Council show that in the last five years gold has more than trebled in value. From January 2007 to January 2008 it grew 40.1%, then January 2008 to January 2009 it grew a further 31.9%, and in the most recent year to January 2010 it has grown a further 16%. So while interest rates on savings have been languishing at or below 1% gold has continued its overall upward trend.* What this shows is that, far from being a series of isolated spikes, the price of this precious metal has been on a general upward trend for some time.

This is being driven by a larger number of investors who do not trust paper-based investments and prefer instead to hold a percentage of their wealth in a portable and readily transferable asset. This is no doubt being accentuated by the distress that the banking system seems to have landed itself in. Balanced against this is world supply that cannot keep pace with this demand. In recent years a
number of gold mines have closed or are approaching exhaustion and there have not been any major new discoveries to counterbalance this effect.

It looks good for gold at present, and the price highs reported by the media are not just random spikes in value caused by single events, but rather a symptom of growing pressure on dwindling supplies, and a preference for many new investors to hold value in a form that is portable, durable and can be negotiated worldwide.

Undated 20p Coin hotspots revealed

-Birmingham is top, Cornwall is bottom

-Coin Collector will pay £100 each for undated 20p's

PEOPLE in Birmingham are the luckiest in the UK when comes to finding valuable dateless 20p coins in their change. Figures show there are more undated 20ps in circulation in the Birmingham area than anywhere else in the UK. The news comes as the London Mint Office reveals it is offering £100 each for 20p coins found without the year date on.

Nick Hart, coin expert and spokesperson for The London Mint Office, said: ‘Birmingham is a hot spot for undated 20p coins – there seems to be a cache of coins processed by the UK banking system turning up in Birmingham pockets. Nationally the coins are in such demand The London Mint Office has chosen to double the amount we pay for them. The great news for Birmingham is it means the undated 20p coins people discover are now worth £100 – it’s not bad for a moment spent thumbing through loose change’.

The coins hit the headlines last June when The London Mint Office announced it would pay £50 for new design 20ps without the year stamp. The coins were minted in error by the Royal Mint and for the first time in 300 years a British coin entered circulation with no date – the last occasion was 1672. The Royal Mint has never said how many undated 20p coins were released into circulation, but estimates place the figure between 50,000 and 250,000.

Figures released today by the London Mint Office reveal that in the Birmingham area coins have been found in Hall Green, Bournville, Hollywood, Red House Park, Weoley Castle and several other areas in and around the city. There is every likelihood that more coins are waiting to be found in the surrounding area. Other hotspots around the UK include Ipswich, Newport, Hull, Liverpool, London and Manchester.

Areas reporting a significant lack of coins being found include Blackburn, Bradford, Nottingham, Middlesbrough and Sheffield. Cornwall has had the slowest response discovering the undated coins with the fewest found.

So far The London Mint Office has only been able to acquire a small number of 20p coins – clearly a lot more remain out there, either waiting to be discovered or being held by speculators anticipating a price rise. Although prices fluctuate, recent eBay data reveals coins are exchanging hands for sums between £40-70.

Recent surveys show that Britons have up to £100m in loose change lying around the home, car or office drawer. Nine out of 10 people say they have coins abandoned down the back of furniture*. With this amount of discarded loose change left around the home, there’s every chance an undated 20p is stuffed down the back of the family sofa, hidden from view in a desk-tidy or quietly nestling beside the mints and roadmap within the glove-box.

The coins of the United Kingdom from 1p to £1 were redesigned in 2007. The designs for the 5p and 10p had been unchanged for 40 years and there is an unwritten convention that designs should be changed at least every 40 years to keep the coinage fresh. The new designs usually coincide with the change of monarch, but as the Queen has reigned for so long, the change had to be planned.

The Royal Mint’s usually impeccable quality control somehow slipped up and a ‘mule’ has escaped into circulation. The term ‘mule’ is applied to a coin that has mismatched sides - a harsh and somewhat inaccurate take on the mule being a mismatch of a horse and donkey.

In this instance the mismatch involves the new design reverse side (tails) and the old design Queen's portrait side. The old obverse (heads), bearing no date, is married to the new reverse (tails). Ordinarily this would only result in some coins of 2008 being issued with an older date (say, 2007 for example). But with the creation of the new designs for the 2008 coinage the date on the 20p was moved to the Queen's portrait side. On the old coins the Queen's portrait side had no date, so the result of this mismatch is not an incorrectly dated 20p, it is a wholly undated one.

In 1983, the Royal Mint made an error with the 2p piece and struck some with the wording ‘new pence’ rather than ‘two pence’. The 1983 2p mule is currently worth a couple of hundred pounds, but we don’t really know how many of those were minted (they never entered circulation and only appeared in special promotional packs but, crucially, not every pack had one).

No one knows how much the undated 20p is worth. But The London Mint Office (a private company with no connection to The Royal Mint) is confident that they are of interest to collectors and is offering the public a quick and easy way to benefit. Not every 20p is affected so it’s a case of hunting out the rarities.

Nick Hart, from The London Mint Office, continued: ‘The London Mint Office is interested in bringing the fun of coin collecting to a much wider audience. Mistakes like this not only fascinate people but also have considerable value increase significance. In fact, in the last year alone, the value has doubled from £50 to £100. We believe this extremely rare error will certainly get the public looking at the coins in their pockets again and noticing the excellent new designs launched by the Royal Mint last year on our coinage.’

London Bullion Market Association Confirms Record High Gold Value Growth

There is no better feeling than knowing you have made a ‘wise’ decision. Given the latest statistics concerning the value growth in gold released by the London Bullion Market Association, your decision to collect gold coins with The London Mint Office must surely fall within that category.

In the two years since January 2008, gold has increased in value by a staggering 52.9%. With bank interest rates languishing at around 1% it would take savings in a Bank or Building Society decades to match the value growth which gold has achieved in just two years. And this despite the desperate economic climate in which we find ourselves with rising unemployment, falling interest rates and collapsing banks. It’s no wonder we all turn to the ‘yellow metal’ during such uncertain times.

Against this background, you can clearly see there has never been a better time to collect gold coins and new strikes. Indeed, to continue participating in this value growth, you actually need do nothing. Simply continue collecting the gold coins and commemoratives you already receive as part of your collection and take great pride and satisfaction that whilst stock markets flounder, your golden ‘savings’ are thriving.