>>reporter: and while some sell their gold jewelry, others, like ian dunbar, are trading gold bars. ut this wasn't always an easy thing to do. in 2000 ian inherited his share of the family estate anddecided to go with gold. >>dunbar: what happened was i asked the bank manager about investing in gold and he just scoffed. and as i sayi was unhappy with the way things were going on the markets and so on, everyone was just getting carried away. >>reporter: ian eventually invested in gold mining shares but what he really wanted was to actually own the goldhimself and that's when bullion vault appeared. >>ash: bullion vault is an online trading service where you can buy, own and sell portions of good deliverygold bars. the gold belongs to you outright, you set your own price online. we've got 14,000 activeclients who have funded their accounts and are buying and selling gold with us and they're spread all over the world, about 83 different countries and they now own about 18 tons of gold between them. >>reporter: since 2006 bullion vault has given ordinary people the chance to trade in the