Our History
The History of BullionByPost
BullionByPost is the UK's No.1 online bullion dealer*, but it has taken many years and a lot of hard work from many of our team to get to this position. To date the company has more customers registered for the website than there are people in the city of Oxford, and sells over 3,000 different bullion and numismatic products.
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Below you can read about all the major milestones and great successes that BullionByPost has reached as a UK business.
Click on the links below to jump to a specific year, or scroll down to read through our company's history in reverse chronological order:
2008
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2009
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2010
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2011
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2012
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2013
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2014
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2015
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2016
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2017
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2018
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2019
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2020
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2021
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2023
2023 marked 15 years since BullionByPost parent company Jewellery Quarter Bullion Limited was incorporated - 25th November 2008. Jewellery Quarter Bullion Limited has grown rapidly in 15 years with multiple business within the precious metals industry, among others.
2023 also saw Jewellery Quarter Bullion Limited join the London Bullion Market Association as an affiliate member. Joining the LBMA is a great honour for the company and helps solidify our place as the UK's number one online bullion dealer.
With the continuation of the Covid-19 pandemic, demand for precious metals as a safe haven was still high and it was another busy year for BullionByPost.
Aside continued growth of the business and the rapid expansion of our Customer Support team, BullionByPost also became an Associate member of the Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC). This gives BBP more access for the assessment and grading of coins, as well as expert support in this process.
2020 was an unusual year for the company - and everybody - with the arrival of the Covid-19.
In the face of the pandemic, demand for safe-havens such as gold and silver increased markedly.
Jewellery Quarter Bullion achieved £300m bullion sales in the UK and Europe, with 75,000 new
registered customers in the process.
We would like to thank all staff members for their professionalism in these difficult times and
the hard work they have put in while working from home, with many deputising to assist the
customer services department and others working overtime to ensure that the business continued
to operate as smoothly as possible and provide the very best service for our customers.
So significant was the increase in bullion demand though that the company won the Sunday
Times International Track 200 Award (pictured right). This also meant hiring several new
multilingual members of staff for our customer support team, as well as additional support
across the business. In total we hired 14 staff in 2020, and 2021 already seems to be carrying on
where we left off...
2019 was an impressive year for precious metals - particularly gold and palladium - with gold
gaining 11% in value in Sterling and 13% in value in US Dollars for the year. With that in mind,
demand was high for the year and helped the company pass the 400,000 orders delivered mark.
In Europe, we launched our Dutch language website
GoldByPost.nl,
with the aim of providing our
range of LBMA-approved gold and silver to the Netherlands bullion market.
The company featured in several news outlets including The Telegraph, Forbes, and the Wall
Street Journal, as well as an interesting podcast appearance by Rob Halliday-Stein, our
Managing Director, on
Julie-Anna Needham's 'Behind The Balance Sheet' financial podcast.
Media interest was not limited to the UK, however, with the Spanish financial newspaper
Dirigentes
interviewing our sister website Inversoro,
and secretive
French financial journalists Jean de Portal
reporting on the quality of BullionByPost.fr
in two of their major financial bulletins for 2019.
2018 started off strong, with
BullionByPost France
registering its first 100,000€ order. The next
month saw the UK hit 300,000 parcels dispatched, and in August the
Irish website
had its first
50,000€ order.
In June the expansion work continued, with the launch of
Orissimo.it
in Italy, and three months later
came the launch of the Greek language website,
XrysosOnline.gr.
The company featured in The Sunday Times repeatedly in 2018 - this time in the Profit Track 100 in
April, highlighting the company's snowballing growth and success it is having, and in the Top Track
250 in October.
BullionByPost also made the finals of the UK Customer Experience Awards 2018, entered in the
categories of ‘Customer-centric Culture - Customer Focus' and ‘Financial Services - Banking &
Investment’.
As of the end of 2018, JQB Ltd has 45 members of staff. With the expected launch of
Inversoro.es
before Christmas, and further European expansion plans for 2019,
many job vacancies are listed on
the BullionByPost website
meaning the company will likely surpass 50 employees in 2019.
BullionByPost began its expansion in earnest in 2017. In March it launched the
BullionByPost Ireland
website, in July it launched
BullionByPost France,
and in December it launched both the
BullionBy
Post EU
and
BullionByPost USA
websites.
In May, the company also dispatched its 250,000th UK order.
2016 was less about what BullionByPost did and more about the political climate, with the Brexit
Referendum taking place in June. The Leave vote winning saw a huge and unprecedented rise in
demand for gold, with staff working overtime to satisfy the extra orders. It will be no surprise that
during this period BullionByPost sent out its 200,000th package and received its 15,000th
eKomi independent review.
November saw a similar boon for gold with the election of Donald Trump as US President. The
result shocked the world, and the economic uncertainty of an untried politician such as Trump
led to yet another surge of interest in gold as an investment.
A quieter year, BullionByPost sent out its 150,000th order in July and by October the company had
listed its 2,000th product on the BBP website. Jewellery Quarter Bullion Ltd added several new staff
members, taking the total of employees to 25.
In 2014 the awards kept coming, with the Institute of Directors (IoD) naming Rob Halliday-Stein
as their Director of the Year and Young Director of the Year. June also saw BBP dispatch its
100,000th customer order, and this growth was recognised in August when BullionByPost finally
became the UK's number 1 online bullion dealer, based on traffic statistics from Experian Hitwise
between August 2013 and 2014. To this day the company still holds this market accolade.
The company and its CEO were back into award-mode in the autumn, with Rob Halliday-Stein into
the finals of the Institute of Directors National Awards 2014 for the category of Director of the Year
- Medium sized Enterprise. BullionByPost also made the finals of the Customer Experience Awards.
Rather appropriately, the 10,000th eKomi review was submitted in November, and in December the
company was acknowledged in The Sunday Times' Fast Track 100 list for rapidly growing companies.
January began with BullionByPost generating its 5,000th eKomi independent customer review
and by March the company received its first £1 million order.
The BBC approached BullionByPost in April to ask if they could use some of its
gold bullion bars
for display during a Newsnight special on the rising value of gold
and its investment potential.
BBP agreed, and sent 10 bars weighing 1kg each down to their London studios.
Growing customer numbers resulted in a summer move from the Jewellery Quarter to Centre City
Tower, near Birmingham New Street station (the company is still here today!), and in August, BBP
followed up its expansion with the first TV advert campaign.
By the end of the year the company had won the award for Best Financial Services at the eCommerce
Awards for Excellence as well as our MD being a finalist for Entrepreneur of the Year at the Growing
Business Awards 2013.
2012 was a relatively quiet year landmark wise for BullionByPost, with the company looking to invest
in expansion. One avenue was a sister website, GOLD.co.uk. Rob Halliday-Stein bought the URL to that site
in April, ready to launch a differently marketed bullion website that focussed on large scale investment.
In September, BullionByPost's growth and quality was recognised by The Royal Mint, who granted BBP
permission to purchase Royal Mint bullion and sell it as an Authorised Distributor; an accolade only held
by two companies in the UK.
By January the company had its 1,000th independent customer review via eKomi - a sign of the confidence
in BullionByPost and its commitment to excellent customer services.
In March, the company hired its Finance Director, and also marked the month with its first
£100,000 order. A few weeks later and the 10,000th parcel was also dispatched, and by July the company
had achieved its first ever £1 million sales week - an impressive feat a year since achieving that in a month.
The company continued to grow steadily, and by July it had registered its first £1 million sales month.
As a result, BullionByPost moved to new headquarters at 93 Vyse Street in Birmingham's Jewellery
Quarter - dubbed "The Coin Exchange". The nickname was a cheeky homage to the likes of
the Corn Exchanges of old, and helped attract both bullion investors and coin collectors to BBP.
Specialist staff, including an in-house web developer, were recruited, as well as managers for marketing,
HR, and operations in order to keep the business growing.
The
BullionByPost website
launched officially in June, selling just 10 products. These were
primarily from the
Belgian refiners Umicore,
with the
100g gold bar
our very first product!
By July, the company has dispatched 100 orders and also registered its first £10,000 purchase.
The demand for gold and silver bullion snowballed, and in November the company had its first
£100,000 sales week and before Christmas it dispatched its 1,000th order.
BullionByPost was founded in 2008 by Rob Halliday-Stein, the managing director of the newly-established
Jewellery Quarter Bullion Ltd. Following the passing of his mother, Rob inherited £10,000 - money with
which is sought to invest in bullion during the financial crisis. Seeing the demand for bullion but having
personally experienced difficulty in buying any, Rob sensed an opportunity to start up an online British
bullion dealership that would be quick and easy to use, while being a secure service and a reliable aide for
investors of all calibres.
The company started as a home operation, quite literally on a living room floor in Birmingham's Jewellery
Quarter, but quickly expanded to a three person team. The company operated on a word-of-mouth basis
initially, while the website and BullionByPost brand was developed, but the ethos of excellent customer
service kept customers coming back for more.
- How To Buy Gold
- How to Buy?
- Payment Options
- Delivery Options
- Gold Storage
- Storage at Brink's
- Gold Investment Guide
- Why buy gold?
- Is gold a good investment?
- Best Time to Buy Gold
- Why Physical Gold?
- Gold Bars vs Coins?
- Gold vs Silver
- Gold - Silver Ratio explained
- VAT on bullion
- Capital Gains Tax & Gold Bullion
- UK Legal Tender Coins
- Top 5 Gold Investments
- Top 5 Silver Investments
- Gold vs ISAs
- Gold vs Buy-to-Let
- Gold vs FTSE 100
- Gold vs Bitcoin
- Where to buy gold?
- Why buy from us?
- Where to sell gold?
- Coin Shops
- Gold Price Forecasts
- Top 10 Gold Producers
- Top 10 Gold Reserves
- Gold Britannia vs Sovereign
- Britannia coin designs
- Sovereign coin designs
- Sovereign Mintages
- Sovereign mint marks
- British coin specs
- What is a proof coin?
- Royal Mint bullion
- The Queen's Beasts
- Royal Mint Lunar Coins
- Bullion Refiners
- British coin mints
- Krugerrands
- Gold Tola - India & Pakistan
- Bullion Index