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Risk-averse Germans are turning to gold in troubled times – but there’s none left.

German gold dealers say demand has skyrocketed this past week to 10 times normal so no more orders can be taken for the foreseeable future.

“The demand exceeds our capacities by a great deal,” said Heiko Ganss, head of precious metal company Pro Aurum.

“The requests cannot be satisfied right now,” a dealer from the Düsseldorf WGZ Bank confirmed.

“Demand for gold as a conservative investment has risen dramatically,” said stephan Henkel. “right now the demand is about 10 times as high as in normal times.”

Gold deliveries now take between four and six weeks.

The US mint said on Monday it had exhausted some of its supply of bullion coins and was struggling to meet demand for gold, silver and platinum.

Londoners stood in line outside the largest gold coin and bar retailer in the city’s West End shopping district, clogging the lobby and trading among themselves as they sought a safe haven for their money.

“People want something tangible, something they can hold on to, something the banks can’t give them,” said Chris Burrow, the owner of ATS Bullion, the gold dealer in the Strand that traces its roots back to the 17th century. “There’s no time to breathe. We’re rushed off our feet. Staff are exhausted.”

As U.K. stocks tumbled to a five-year low, paced by financial-services companies, gold advanced. Since Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s Sept. 15 filing for bankruptcy protection, exacerbating the worldwide credit crisis, gold for immediate delivery has jumped 19 percent.

“Investors are rushing to safe havens and physical gold seems to be the favorite one,” said Frederic Panizzutti, a senior vice president at MKS Finance, one of Switzerland’s four bullion refiners.

British government action to prop up the banking industry has failed to reassure investors. The U.K. on Oct. 8 promised 50 billion pounds ($86 billion) of capital to banks, the same day the Bank of England cut its benchmark interest rate by half a percentage point. Last month, the government brokered a takeover of HBOS Plc, Britain’s largest mortgage lender, and seized control of Bradford & Bingley’s mortgage division.

Central banks have all but stopped lending gold to commercial and investment banks and other participants in the precious metals market, in a move that on Tuesday sent the cost of borrowing bullion for one-month to more than twenty times its usual level.

The one-month gold lease rate rocketed to 2.649 per cent, its highest level since May 2001 and significantly above its five-year average of 0.12 per cent, according to data from the London Bullion Market Association.

Gold lease rates for two, three, and six months and for a year also jumped to levels not seen in the last seven years.

Traders said the jump reflects the fact that central banks — mostly European — have almost completely stopped lending gold in the last few days and are not rolling forward old leases after maturity. This is because of fears that some borrowers might not repay their bullion loans if they are engulfed by the financial crisis.

“A number of central banks have been cutting back on their gold lending,” said Tom Kendall, a precious metals strategist at Mitsubishi in London.

John Reade, a commodities strategist at UBS, added that there had been a lot of talk about some central banks being unwilling to lend their gold because of a redoubled focus on the risk of borrowers not returning it.