Free Republic

(Kitco News) - The physical gold and silver market just became a little tighter in the near-term as one major mint is shutting down operations for the next two weeks. -snipLast week, the U.S. Mint announced that it sold out of American Eagle Silver Eagle bullion coins. It said that demand for silver coins has jumped 300% compared to sales in February.

The Royal Canadian Mint is investigating how a sealed, "pure gold" wafer with proper mint stampings may in fact be a fake. The one-ounce gold piece, which was supposed to be 99.99 per cent pure, was purchased by an Ottawa jeweller on Oct. 18 at a Royal Bank of Canada branch. Yet tests of the bar show it may contain no gold at all. When neither the mint nor RBC would take the bar back, jeweller Samuel Tang contacted CBC news.

Was $15-million worth of gold stolen from the Royal Canadian Mint by dissolving it in acid, rendering it invisible to metal detectors? Two gold-refining industry sources say gold chloride dissolved in an acid solution can be unrecognizable to metal detectors, such as those guarding the mint's high-security Sussex Drive refinery in Ottawa -- and the method might explain the recently announced disappearance of more than half a metric ton of gold from the mint's inventory. "It could be taken out in that form . . . in a liquid chemical form," one U.S. refining executive said. .... An eight-month hunt...