Solid-Gold Pandas

While the furor over South Africa’s racial policies is hurting sales of Krugerrands, that nation’s gold coin, it is boosting sales of other gold coins. That is good news for Martin Weiss.

Weiss is president of L. C. Marten Inc., a Palos Verdes firm that is one of only two North American wholesale distributors of Chinese gold panda coins. (The other is Manford, Tordella & Brookes in New York.) Weiss says the firm is enjoying its best sales year ever since the coins were first introduced by China in 1982.

He says he has recently received single orders from retail dealers for as many as several hundred one-ounce panda coins at a time, “sales which we would never have had before” the South Africa furor. Before, the largest single orders for one-ounce coins were “10, 5 or 20 at a time,” Weiss says.

Krugerrands, expected to lose their ranking as the nation’s best-selling gold coin this year to the Canadian Maple Leaf coin, were most popular in the one-ounce size, while pandas generally sell better in the smaller one-tenth- and one-twentieth-ounce sizes.

Overall, Weiss says the firm has sold 15,000 ounces of panda coins as of the end of July, slightly ahead of last year’s pace, when the firm sold 24,000 ounces over the entire year. The one-ounce coins wholesale for about $350 an ounce.

However, Weiss says, panda coin sales would probably have risen even without the Krugerrand slump. That is because previously issued panda coins are viewed as collector’s items, with 1982 one-ounce pandas selling for as much as $700 each, more than twice their value in gold, Weiss says.

Panda coins are also popular as jewelry, as many owners make them into earrings and pendants. “Like teddy bears, everybody loves pandas,” Weiss says, adding that making the coins into jewelry “is a way for people to really enjoy their investment. If they wear it, they really enjoy it.”