The U.K. had the world’s second-biggest reserves in 1958 and now ranks 18th. Gordon Brown, the finance minister at the time, sold about 400 tons in auctions from 1999 to 2002, getting no more than $296.50 and as little as $255.75. The nation raised almost $3.5 billion, which was invested in dollars, euros and yen. The gold is now valued at about $18.4 billion, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Hold Assets

Morgan Stanley expects central banks to buy another 655 tons through 2018, while the WGC anticipates purchases of at least 450 tons this year alone. The price slump may not deter them because of how much longer they typically hold assets relative to most investors.

“Central banks are strategic investors, and look at it as the currency of the last resort that lenders will gladly take,” said Rachel Benepe, who helps manage $2.2 billion of assets at the First Eagle Gold Fund in New York. “When there are any big moves, investors get panicked. Nothing has changed from our viewpoint. Gold is a hedge against policy actions, and governments globally are announcing policies that are unproven.”

The bear market is a blow to investors who anticipated that stimulus by central banks and the almost doubling of sovereign debt to $22.9 trillion since 2008 would debase financial assets and boost demand for the traditional store of value. The Bank of Japan and the Federal Reserve have said they need to keep buying bonds and the International Monetary Fund cut its 2013 estimate for world growth four times since July.

Previous Record

The plunge has encouraged some investors to buy more. The U.S. Mint said this week it ran out of its smallest American Eagle gold coin and purchases from the Perth Mint in Australia doubled. Standard Chartered Plc’s sales to India last week exceeded the previous record by 20 percent and UBS AG says physical flows there are near the highest since 2008.

Price swings are an “unavoidable risk” and aren’t a “big concern” because gold is a long-term strategy for diversifying currency reserves, the Bank of Korea said in a statement April 16. The central bank almost doubled its holdings to 104.4 tons by the end of March from a year earlier, still only equal to 1.6 percent of all its foreign reserves, WGC data show.

While the drop in prices is “extremely concerning,” the South Africa Reserve Bank won’t adjust its reserve policy, Governor Gill Marcus told reporters April 16. The bank holds 125.1 tons, little changed over the past decade. Gold traded in rand dropped about 18 percent since reaching a record Oct. 8.

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