The Royal Mint, the official mint of the United Kingdom, has sold more silver and platinum bullion this year than in any previous year. The British mint reported this on 21 October 2026 in its quarterly figures for July to September. And that is with three months of the year still to go. Gold coins are gaining ground again as well.
The Royal Mint’s figures
According to the Royal Mint itself, revenue from silver bullion sold through its online shop rose by 295 percent in the first nine months of 2026, compared with the same period last year. For silver bullion coins alone, the increase was as much as 323 percent. Platinum revenue rose by 118 percent. For both metals, the total already exceeds every previous full year.
Across all precious metals, the value of what customers bought was 39 percent higher than in the first nine months of 2025. According to the Mint, most of that growth came in the opening months of the year, when the precious metals market was very busy.
One caveat: the Royal Mint does not publish quantities or weights, only percentages on its revenue. Because silver was considerably more expensive this year than in 2025, higher revenue does not tell you exactly how many coins changed hands.
Gold coins are picking up again
For gold the picture is calmer, but positive. Revenue from gold coins was 21 percent higher between July and September than in the previous quarter. Over the first nine months it is up 10 percent on last year. New customers keep coming too: 29 percent of buyers in the past quarter were buying precious metals from the Royal Mint for the first time, and the number of new customers rose by 13 percent compared with April to June.
Stuart O’Reilly, Private Wealth Consultant at the Royal Mint, summed up the year like this:
“2026 has been an extraordinary year for silver and platinum.”
Stuart O’Reilly, The Royal Mint, 21 October 2026
He does expect the final quarter could be turbulent, with the UK Budget, the US midterm elections and uncertainty over interest rates.
Selling silver while the price slides
The timing is striking. While the Royal Mint presents its record figures, the silver price itself is in a downward trend. On Thursday silver lost nearly 5 percent, as we wrote in our article on the fall in gold and silver driven by expensive oil. On Friday morning silver was trading around 54 dollars per troy ounce, its lowest level this year. Gold briefly dipped below 4,000 dollars and then hovered around 4,020 dollars.
Record demand at the British Mint and a lower price do not contradict each other. The big purchases mainly took place early in the year. Today’s price is set on the world market, not by what a single mint sells.
If you want to sell silver, what matters most is the metal inside a coin or object. On our page about selling silver you can read how that works in practice, from coins to tableware.
Many old Belgian coins contain real silver, such as the 50 franc Mercury and the 50 franc Hercules. When you sell, the weight is converted to pure silver. A coin in a drawer is often worth more than old change.
What does this mean for your old coins?
A new Britannia from the Royal Mint and an old Belgian silver coin have a lot in common. Both are valued first and foremost on their weight and fineness. On our page about silver coins you can see how much fine silver each coin contains.
For gold, too, the Royal Mint is familiar to anyone who inherits coins. The gold Sovereign has been struck in its modern form since 1817 and regularly turns up in Flemish estates. It weighs 7.988 grams and contains about 7.32 grams of pure gold. You can read more on our page about the gold Sovereign.
That mints across Europe are betting on bullion coins again is something we already saw earlier this year, for example with the French Marianne. The lesson stays the same: a new coin in the shops does not change the value of your old coins. That depends on weight, fineness and the day’s price, and for the odd rare coin also on collector value.