Here's a puzzle. Why has the fizz gone out of productive gold mining stocks while the price of the mined stuff - gold bars and coins - has been setting new world records?
Auctioneer Dunbar Sloane says he has been getting big crowds in his Auckland rooms, with Asian buyers, among others, paying giddy prices for gold coins. Similar interest is expected at Dunbar's Wellington rooms next week.
Wellington auctioneer Anthony Gallagher says the hammer price for sovereigns is expected to be $400 (from $250 a year ago) and half sovereigns at $250, with buyers' premiums on top of that. Near-mint older Victorian coins might fetch more. On Trade Me, a late Victorian sovereign has a starting bid of $525.
Silver prices have also been rising.
Mr Gallagher says dealers are buying silver jewellery, cutlery and ornaments and melting them down for scrap. Top-quality antique silver pieces continue to sell, often to overseas collectors.
Interest in gold, silver and platinum has soared since the global economic crisis hit in 2008, with investors seeing them as safe bets at a time of economic and political uncertainty - the traditional role for precious metals.
Gold has risen, with the odd setback, fairly steadily since it was US$513 ($615) an ounce in 2005, rising to a new record price level around US$1530 lately.
In spite of this, the sharemarket prices for many gold mining shares have come off the boil. OceanaGold, owner of world class mines in Otago and the West Coast, has fallen around $2 a share since it hit $5.44 last September, having been as low as $2.95 last month. It is also developing a mine at Didipio, in the Philippines.
Newmont, which controls the highly productive Martha Mine at Waihi in the Coromandel was trading at US$54.55 on the New York Stock Exchange last week, down from its all-time high of US$69.94 last September.
Newcrest, Australia's biggest gold miner and in the ASX top 10, has seen its price drift from a recent high of A$43.41 ($56.15) last November to around the A$36 mark, though it picked up in recent trading to $A38.86. It is still ahead of its 12-month low of A$32.36.
The recent sharp falls in share prices of producing gold miners is confounding many investors who believed they were better to invest in a mining company with good growth prospects and proven reserves in the ground than buying the physical metal and coins with the associated headaches of having to find somewhere safe to secure them. Many producing gold mining companies also pay dividends: you get no cash returns from hoarding coins or a gold bar.
However, dividends are usually niggardly as the companies constantly seem to find new mines that require substantial sums of money to develop. The prices of many speculative stocks, including explorers and smaller companies awaiting resource permits to begin mining, have also slipped. This is leading to suggestions that there could be another round of merger and takeover activity.
Analysts say confidently that this period of weakness will be temporary, and many are forecasting higher prices.
Credit Suisse, for example, rates Newcrest as an "outperform" with a target price of A$50; Deutsche Bank, in research for Craigs Investment Partners, rate it as a buy with a target price of $46.
They argue that the fall in prices is linked to the general slippage in share values that began in April.
This has coincided with growing concern at the global outlook, due, among other things, to the Greek and southern European debt problems and worries over future Chinese demand.
Optimists believe that international share markets will follow the well-worn pattern and show a good bounce later this year.
In the meantime, markets seem to be risk-averse. Pessimists worry that the international gold price, hovering around record levels, has risen too fast and may slip.
However, many gold analysts believe that given expected inflation, a growing appetite for gold especially in China and India, and forecast drops in production, will ensure it will rise further.
Global production is forecast to grow by only 30 per cent over the next five years. Analysts at several Australian brokers have a US$2000 an ounce target; Merrill Lynch says that a gold price of US$1500-US$2000 looks sustainable for the next five years due to investment demand.
Another concern has been reported cost blowouts and delays in getting some major mines fully operational, causing some investors to lose enthusiasm.
This goes with the territory.
Even the biggest and most experienced companies encounter regular unexpected operational problems, such as when lower- than-expected grades of gold are encountered or problems with processing plants lead to higher than expected costs.
Both OceanaGold and the various owners of the Martha Mine have encountered all these headaches over the years.
In 2003 Newmont Mining expected to spend US$450 million developing the Boddington mine in West Australia. By the time it was completed in 2008 it had cost US$1.5 billion.
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