Gold bars as an investment – what should you know?

Gold bars - Basic information

Gold bars are often associated with a characteristic shape similar to a cuboid, familiar from films, for example. However, it is mainly bank vaults and state treasuries that can boast of owning such bars – in interbank and international trade, bars weighing 400 ounces are used.

Individual investors tend to purchase much smaller bars. For example, the Mint of Poland offers bars weighing 1 g, 5 g, 10 g, 20 g, 1 ounce, 50 g, 100 g, 250 g, 500 g, and up to 1 kilogram. These are the options you can choose from when buying gold as an investment.

Thanks to the variety of weights, it is easy to adapt the bars to your chosen investment strategy.

We recommend that novice investors in particular purchase smaller bars, as this will make it easier to resell them – it is much easier to sell a bar weighing a few grams than one weighing a kilogram.

It is important to remember that if you want to sell a gold bar, it is worth going to a certified point – the Mennica Skarbowa mint also buys gold and other precious metals in various forms.

Bar certificate

Customers often ask whether the bar they are buying will come with a certificate in the form of a document. We answer "no" because there is no need for one. The role of the certificate is fulfilled by the so-called CertiPack. It is nothing more than the factory packaging in which manufacturers place the bars. It not only protects the bar from damage or scratches, but above all guarantees its authenticity. The packaging contains all the necessary information about the gold bar, i.e., fineness, weight, serial number, and manufacturer's name.

It is important not to remove the bar from its packaging after purchase, as this will reduce its value if you decide to sell it in the future.

Sweet bar

A chocolate-shaped bar – this is the product that Swiss refinery Valcambi Suisse is surprising investors planning to buy gold with.

The 100g CombiBar looks like a chocolate bar – it is literally divided into 100 smaller pieces. Precise break points allow you to easily divide the bar into parts without losing even a milligram.

This is an interesting proposition for people who are looking for a safe capital investment and are also interested in high investment liquidity.

Unsorted gold

Coins, even bullion coins, have certain aesthetic qualities. Sometimes buyers are guided by the popularity of specific designs. In the case of bars, only the weight matters, which is why customers who want to buy gold for processing and who care about the lowest possible price are recommended to choose unsorted gold.

These are products from the secondary market, but also from lesser-known mints and refineries, including those that are not LBMA-accredited. Gold bars from the unsorted range have damaged CertiPacks or may not have them at all. Signs of wear are also possible, but in their case this is irrelevant, as the key factor is that the weight parameters are maintained.

Safety first

Buying gold is supposed to be an investment, so the most important thing is to choose a safe place to buy it. Online auctions with prices lower than those offered by professional gold dealers should raise concerns rather than interest.

You should choose authorized outlets that offer products sourced from reliable suppliers. One such place is Mennica Skarbowa, which sells products only from reputable global mints affiliated with the LBMA (London Bullion Market Association), an organization that sets and supervises the highest standards on the market. These include recognized issuers such as Heraeus, Umicore, and PAMP. Bullion bars from these mints will definitely be easier to sell than products from smaller regional mints.