London good delivery bar

The gold bars traded in the London bullion market are called ‘London Good Delivery’ bars. The bars have a distinctive shape that makes them easy to pick up by hand.

They have marks that identify their maker, the purity of the gold they are made from, the year they were made, and a unique serial number.

There are around 400,000 of these bars stored in the vaults below the Bank of England. They don’t belong to the Bank itself. Instead, the Bank of England stores them for the UK Government, other governments and central banks around the world, and many other financial institutions.