Bullion
gold, silver, or other precious metals in the form of bars or ingots
Bullion is non-ferrous metal that has been refined to a high standard of elemental purity. The term is ordinarily applied to bulk metal used in the production of coins and especially to precious metals such as gold and silver. It comes from the Anglo-Norman term for a melting-house where metal was refined, and earlier from French bouillon, "boiling". Although precious metal bullion is no longer used to make coins for general circulation, it continues to be held as an investment with a reputation for stability in periods of economic uncertainty. To assess the purity of gold bullion, the centuries-old technique of fire assay is still employed, together with modern spectroscopic instrumentation, to accurately determine its quality.
Bullion is sometimes contrasted with specie, the latter being coin made of bullion (or synonymously, bullion coin). Thus understood, bullion refers to precious metal kept in forms other than coin, namely bars, ingots, or plates, including regional and historical variants such as grivnas in Eastern Europe or sycees in China.
As investment
The specifications of bullion are often regulated by market bodies or legislation. In the European Union, the minimum purity for gold to be referred to as "bullion", which is treated as investment gold with regard to taxation, is 99.5% for gold bullion bars and 90% for bullion coins. Investors may choose to purchase physical bullion for several reasons –to attempt to hedge against currency risks, inflation risks, or geopolitical risks, or even just to add diversification to an investment portfolio.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Bullion” as gold, silver, or other precious metals in the form of bars or ingots. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as gold, silver, or other precious metals in the form of bars or ingots. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q557709. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bullion” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.