Safe and Sound: A Guide to Storing Gold, Silver and Other Precious Metals

Q1. What are the main benefits of using a storage vault?

Stephanie explains that storing precious metals in a dedicated facility offers enhanced security and insurance protection, which in turn offers peace of mind as this can help mitigate against risks related to theft or damage. “Unlike home safes or bank safety deposit boxes,” says Stephanie, “professional vaults are purpose-built to safeguard high-value assets and often have the infrastructure to facilitate the transfer and custody of assets as customers seek to buy or sell.”

Q2. What makes the Mint unique?

The Mint operates a world-class refinery, manages a robust bullion business, and brings decades of hands-on expertise in handling and safeguarding metal. What truly sets us apart, according to Stephanie, is our unique ownership structure, “As a federal Crown corporation, our financial statements are audited by the Office of the Auditor General of Canada, which offers our clients an exceptional level of trust. Our facilities undergo regular audits, we conduct semi-annual inventory counts, and depending on the specific customer needs, we can facilitate independent third-party audits and provide customized reporting.”

“Because we produce precious metal products, we can help institutional customers expand their holdings by providing easy access to new investment coins and bars. We produce the product and add it directly into the customer’s storage account without the inconvenience, cost and risk of transportation. Similarly, when a customer is looking to sell or liquidate their holdings, we can easily connect them to our network of financial trading partners, who hold accounts with us, to facilitate a transaction. Precious metals can be easily sold and transferred within our walls, incurring little to no added cost and with minimal effort.” 

Q3. What storage options are available?

“The Mint offers allocated storage to institutional investors for gold, silver, platinum and palladium. As well, we offer an unallocated option for gold and silver. With allocated storage, the investor is the outright owner of specific metal. Their holdings are uniquely identified as theirs and segregated (or stored separately) from assets belonging to other customers. Unallocated storage is an alternative model whereby the investor has an ownership claim on a specified quantity of metal, usually from a comingled pool, but is not assigned specific items.”

Our primary vaults in Ottawa and Winnipeg are monitored 24/7 by trained security personnel and cutting-edge surveillance systems, but we also have a network of sub-custodial facilities in key financial centres across North America and Europe.

Q4. What trends have you observed?

“The price of precious metals like gold and silver reached record highs in 2025*, which created a broader awareness and interest in this asset class among new and seasoned investors alike. We witnessed this firsthand across the markets we serve and received many new inquiries about our vaulted storage services.

With price increase comes a rise in insurance costs and risk considerations, all of which make a dedicated storage facility an attractive option for investors.

We have observed the emergence of innovative new precious metal investment products which allow smaller investors access to fractional ownership of precious metals stored securely at the Mint. We have seen strong inflows this year in our storage business due to this expanded customer base.”

*Precious Metals Prices (USD) in 2025²