Retail premiums
This condition measures how much extra dealers charge over the raw metal price. The all-in price you pay for a coin is the spot price plus a dealer premium. When physical demand is high, the premium widens and the all-in price gets worse. This is a new daily series we built from openly-served dealer pages. It ramps into full weight as history accrues.
- Share of the score
- 0.04%
- Share used today
- 0.0%
- Source
- The Gold Barometer Retail Premium Index (our own daily reading across seven dealers, by kind of product)
- How often it updates
- daily
- Date of the newest figure
- 2026-11-04
- Newest figure
- 3.201 %
- How fresh it is
- Up to date. The newest figure is 0 days old, and we stop counting this part once it passes 7 days. An old figure left counting would quietly drag the score toward whatever was true last month.
- How strong the evidence is
- strong on cost, weak as a predictor. The premium is money you pay on day one
What we look at
Once a day we read the price of one coin or bar, paid by check or wire, on the product pages of seven dealers. Each price is compared with the metal price shown on the same page. We group the products by kind: Gold Eagle, Maple Leaf, one-ounce bar. For each kind we take the middle dealer, then we average the three kinds. A product marked out of stock is left out. We only use dealer pages that are served openly, with no login and no anti-bot challenge. We publish one number for the market. No dealer's price is ever 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
Today this condition reads 33 out of 100. Its weight starts at zero and grows a little each day. It counts fully once it has 12 months of record.
Notes: Published as a derived aggregate only (DATA-RIGHTS).
How the score is worked out
We rank the day's 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. Our own daily reading on the product pages of seven dealers, one unit by check or wire. The dealers: SD Bullion, Texas Precious Metals, Camino Coin, Pinehurst Coin Exchange, Miles Franklin, Colorado Gold, Liberty Coin. 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.