"For more than 30 years, I kept gold jewellery mother bought personally, and with media saying prices are high, I thought I would sell them now except for some keepsakes from her, " said Ebina, in her 60s.
"I earned a lot more than I thought they were worth. I'm not interested in buying gold. inch
It is sellers like Ebina who will offset surging investment into precious metal funds in Japan, which should make the country a net exporter for that sixth year in a row.
The assets of Mitsubishi UFJ Trust as well as Banking Corp's physical gold exchange traded fund (ETF), Japan's first backed by metal stored in the united kingdom, have grown by a quarter since end-July to 21. 8 billion yen ($284. 9 million) by Aug. 23.
"Investors are seriously treating our gold ETF as a genuine asset class, just like investing in equities, bonds and currencies, " stated Osamu Hoshi, deputy general manager at Mitsubishi UFJ Trust.
"They see a have to diversify their assets after seeing volatile moves in currencies and stocks yet others, " Hoshi said.
A downgrade of the U. S. sovereign debt rating amid a deteriorating outlook for that world's largest economy, as well as a spreading European debt crisis, have triggered a rush to gold which has boosted prices by 14 percent this month.
"Inflows have become especially big this month as fears over both U. S. dollar and the euro have intensified, " said Ryosuke Okazaki, main investment officer at ITC Investment Partners. ITC's Japan Gold Funds have regarding about 2 billion yen under management.
Still, ETF assets are a small fraction of physical holdings, and Japanese institutional investors such as pension funds remain reluctant about contact with commodities.
"They could be holding commodities in hedge funds, like managed futures, but I don't believe many want to invest directly in gold or other commodities even if returns are incredibly attractive, " said a fund manager of an industrial material maker, that supervises about 50 billion yen in corporate pensions.
Gold prices may end up being hitting successive records, but for those buying in yen, they are still down nearly a fifth from the record high in 1980.
There is also no strong incentive to purchase. "The current core investor generation has not experienced real damage to the yen's value or perhaps a crisis which rocked the country, " said Tetsu Emori, a fund supervisor at Astmax Co Ltd.
"There is no sense of fear in Japan right now as there is in Europe or in the usa. So, investors who own gold focus only on how to cash in in the rise in prices, " he said.