Retail premiums

What we look at

We take the median dealer premium over spot across a basket of 1-ounce gold products, sampled once a day. We only use dealer pages that are served openly (no login, no anti-bot challenge). We publish a single number for the market (a base-100 aggregate). Per-dealer prices are never republished.

Why it matters if you're buying gold

The price you see on the news is the wholesale price of the metal. It is not what you pay. Somebody has to melt that metal, stamp it into a coin, guarantee its purity, insure it and post it to you. All of that is added on top, and how much gets added moves week to week. When mints cannot keep up with orders, coins become scarce and the extra grows fast. It happened when the United States Mint suspended sales in 2008, during the demand surge of 2013, and when Swiss refineries shut in March 2020. On those days the gold price itself had not moved. What changed was the cost of getting your hands on any. This is the only condition on this site that comes straight out of your pocket, on the day you buy, whatever gold does afterwards.

What this cannot tell you

Strong on what you pay, weak as a predictor. We include this condition because it changes what a physical buyer actually pays, not because it predicts the price. The weight is deliberately phased in: it reaches 5% around August 2027, then its full 10% a year later. Premiums are regional (US versus India, March 2020). This series is US only. We make no claim to forecast gold returns. A note follows on which shops we can and cannot see. The basket only holds dealers whose terms allow automated access. It only holds dealers whose pages serve openly (no login, no anti-bot challenge, never circumvented). It only holds dealers whose sites let in our price-checking robot, which announces itself by name. The provenance page carries the full disclosure and the current dealer count. The largest US dealers by volume are not in the basket. So the day-to-day movement of the median is the meaningful signal, not the absolute level. There is no market-wide benchmark for retail coin premiums, weighted by how much each dealer sells, to compare against.

Today's reading in plain words

This condition has no score yet. Its weight starts at zero and grows a little each day. It counts fully once it has 12 months of record.

How the score is worked out

We rank the daily median premium within this condition's own growing history. Its weight grows a little each day from zero. It reaches 5% once 12 months of history are recorded, around August 2027. It then climbs to its full 10% a year after that. The other six conditions share out the missing weight in the meantime.

Which way it points. A low premium rank raises the score. A high premium (worse all-in price for a buyer) lowers it.

What the evidence says

• March 2020: the gap between London's wholesale gold price and New York's price for delivered metal hit $50 to $70 per ounce. A normal gap is about $1.50. Swiss refineries had shut and physical shipments stopped. Meanwhile the World Gold Council reported Western coin demand up 36% on a year earlier. In India, gold sold about $70 an ounce below the world price at the same moment. Premiums are regional. This condition is US only.
• 2008: the US Mint suspended American Eagle production during peak Great Financial Crisis retail demand.
• 2013: WGC Gold Demand Trends Q2 2013 documents a physical demand surge that widened premiums.
• Charteris and Kallinterakis (2021) describe feedback trading in the coin market at mechanism level.

If you are selling

This condition has the cleanest buyer-versus-seller flip in the whole instrument. High retail premiums are directly good for physical sellers. Dealer bids sit closer to spot when their inventory is tight. Cash buyers of jewelry and coins bid harder. The cost argument is direct.

Source: The Gold Barometer Retail Premium Index. Daily middle value across openly-served dealer pages (SD Bullion, Liberty Coin, and clean-terms additions as the basket grows). Per-dealer prices are not republished. See the methodology page for the full formula, and the provenance page for where each number comes from and how fresh it is.