Maple Leaf 1/4 oz or Britannia 1/4 oz: which is the better buy today?
Maple Leaf 1/4 oz and Britannia 1/4 oz hold the same gold — 7.78 g of fine metal each — and differ in everything else: Maple Leaf 1/4 oz is struck in 999.9 ‰ · 24 kt by Royal Canadian Mint, Britannia 1/4 oz in 999.9 ‰ · 24 kt by The Royal Mint. With the metal identical, the only thing left to compare is what each dealer charges above it.
| coin | Maple Leaf 1/4 oz | Britannia 1/4 oz |
|---|---|---|
| fine gold | 7.78 g | 7.78 g |
| gross weight | 7.78 g | 7.78 g |
| purity | 999.9 ‰ · 24 kt | 999.9 ‰ · 24 kt |
| diameter | 20 mm | 22 mm |
| thickness | 1.78 mm | 1.63 mm |
| face value | 10 dollars | 25 pounds |
| struck | Canada · since 1982 | United Kingdom · since 1987 |
The prices come from the feed, and the feed has not answered yet.
Maple Leaf 1/4 oz — The quarter ounce, 20 mm of 999.9 gold with the ten-dollar face value — the size the Mint added first, in 1982, when the ounce turned out to be too big a bite for many buyers.
Britannia 1/4 oz — The quarter-ounce Britannia: 22 mm of pure gold with the twenty-five-pound face value, and the same trident, in a coin about the size of a Sovereign that holds a little more gold than one.
Both are struck in 999.9 ‰ · 24 kt: the same alloy, the same feel in the hand, and any difference on the scale is a difference in gold.
Both are modern bullion coins, struck for investors — Maple Leaf 1/4 oz since 1982, Britannia 1/4 oz since 1987 — and priced on their metal and the margins above it.
So the comparison is the premium. Whichever of the two a dealer asks less for above its metal is the cheaper gold that day — and that changes shop by shop and day by day, which is what the numbers above are for.