Best Gold Coins to Buy: May 2022 Update
Posted on May 20, 2022
By Paul Vanguard, for BullionMax.com
I have to admit one thing – our BullionMax customers are loyal. Month after month, they refuse to settle for something they don’t want (even if it’s a better price!) and instead just keep on buying their favorite gold coins. Now, we believe in the wisdom of crowds. We know BullionMax shoppers are a sensible group of folks, interested in getting the best gold coins for their money.
So I’ve made it my mission today to get to the bottom of this. It's time to figure out what's making May’s best-selling gold coins eclipse the competition.
With that in mind, here are BullionMax’s customer picks for best gold coins to buy for investment in May 2022…
The 2022 1 ounce Australian kangaroo gold coin is easily the finest gold coming out of Australia. Brilliant, uncirculated and sporting a new annual design, what really sets this Perth Mint mainstay apart is the coin's price. It's the lowest-cost one ounce gold coin on this list, selling for just barely above spot price. Right now, our kangaroos have lower premiums than most of our 1 oz gold bullion bars – how’s that for a bargain?
Now, we know this won’t last, because of the collectability aspect of the gold kangaroo – that reverse design gets refreshed every single year. In a few months, Perth Mint will go back to their design studio and we’ll see the end of this year’s design, forever.
Right now we aren’t seeing as many single-coin orders as we’d expect from collectors. Nope. We almost never ship a single gold kangaroo. Based on this evidence, buyers of this coin, especially those ordering by the tube (10 each), are definitely out for a bargain. IRA eligibility doesn't hurt, either.
Enjoy those razor-thin premiums while you can!
"Fractional" gold coins, or those that weigh less than an ounce, have been getting very popular. The quarter-ounce Canadian twin maple is perhaps the most mystifying item on our list of top sellers. Despite the comparatively high premium, our customers can't get enough of it.
So what’s going on?
The situation becomes less suspicious when we take into account the coin's fixed mintage. Our customers are clearly looking to get their hands on a premium product of limited supply. The reverse proof finish, to many, gives the coin a more stylish look. “Reverse proof” is when the background or “field” of the coin is frosted rather than shiny, and the design is mirror-bright. Reverse proof coins aren’t particularly common, which definitely adds to its collector appeal.
And, you know what? Just about no one else anywhere has 1/4 oz Canadian twin maple leaf coins in stock. We might be the last online bullion dealer to sell you this coin at any price.
The Royal Canadian Mint, the first to issue a 0.99999 purity coin, has settled with a 0.9999 purity on this one – like just about every other gold coin they mint. Four nines is plenty! More than enough for the sensible investor, really. The whole “five nines” or 0.99999 purity coin was more of a publicity stunt than anything else.
"Incremental gold coins, you say? We bet we can outdo those hammerers in Canada,” the U.S. Mint folks said. Or so I imagine the conversation went, at least.
I can say one thing for sure: this 1/10 oz gold coin is the lowest-cost gold coin in our entire inventory. Today it sells for under $300, and what do you get? A rugged gold coin, minted to the highest standard, and the only one of its kind allowed in a precious metals IRA despite having that extra copper and silver content that makes it tough.
Why not pure gold? Here’s what the U.S. Mint has to say:
American Eagles use the durable 22-karat standard established for gold circulating coinage over 350 years ago. They contain their stated amount of pure gold, plus small amounts of alloy. This creates harder coins that resist scratching and marring, which can diminish resale value.
Who wants diminished resale value? And let me tell you, those 0.9999+ pure gold coins will get scuffed if you look at them funny. They’re best handled not at all, ever. An American eagle, though? It’s made to a different standard – the same kinds of coins our Founding Fathers settled bets with, that the Marquis de Lafayette handed out to pay his Continental Army troops during the American Revolution. These aren’t historic coins, no, but they feel old.
Compared to the Canadian maple leaf, or even any other coin of a similar weight, the premium isn't excessive. Personally, I think affordability is primary, giving folks the opportunity to buy gold when they thought they could only afford silver. That’s a pretty big deal for a lot of people!
The brand-new Type 2 design with more intricate details on the front and a new design on the reverse is probably a secondary consideration.
Here, we move from revolutionary fervor to the ancestral homeland of our former oppressors, Great Britain (or the UK, or whatever they call it these days). When you take a look at the 1 oz Britannia gold coin, you can sort of tell the British have about a thousand years more experience minting coins than we do in the New World.
The obverse of the coin, featuring Britannia herself, is undoubtedly one of the best designs on any coin we've seen this year. The designers went all out with this one, but not just to make other mints look bad. The coin's intricate, detailed design makes it possible to implement a number of anti-counterfeiting features that don't take away from the appearance in the slightest.
One of the anti-counterfeiting features, that pattern of waves in the 2021 design, is absolutely hypnotic. You’d laugh if you knew how many hours I’ve sat with one in my hand, just tilting it back and forth to watch the light play over the coin’s patterns, looking so much like ocean waves illuminated by a setting sun…
Darn, these Britannias are just plain beautiful. There’ve been a whole lot of different designs over the years, too – you can see how Britannia has changed here.
(It’d be silly not to mention our Britannias are also, right now, available at surprisingly low premiums over spot…)
Surprise, surprise: U.S. Mint's flagship coin, the one-ounce gold American eagle makes it to the top of the list. Not just in May 2022, not just in 2022 either – pretty much every month. From this list, we've ascertained that our customers want the best gold coins from top sovereign mints. But, more than anythingelse, they want the big daddy, the poppa raptor, the one ounce American gold eagle. Why?
Somehow this makes me think of the Texas Ranger story…
Texas Ranger Joaquin Jackson who spent the later part of his illustrious career looking after the harsh, massive Texas Big Bend Country, packed a Colt .45 auto throughout his distinguished career. When asked why he carried Colt’s .45 Government Model, he replied in typical Ranger fashion… ‘Because they don’t make a Colt 46.’
Who knows how popular a 2 oz gold eagle would be?
Leaving that thought experiment aside, what does the 1 oz gold eagle represent to our customers?
It represents value in more ways than one. It's synonymous with gold investment, coin collecting, patriotism, sound money, investment in tangible objects with intrinsic value, our national heritage (see Founding Fathers above) and all things American.
They’re so astonishingly popular they’re hard to keep in stock. People who buy American eagles are very rarely interested in selling them again… Despite the U.S. Mint’s best efforts to keep our shelves full, sometimes premiums can get a bit higher than we’d like. Our customers buy them anyway.
Paul Vanguard is a lifelong precious metals enthusiast and a proud member of the BullionMax team.
