Investors and collectors are always looking for a great price on gold coins and bars. It’s understandable that everyone wants to pay the lowest price possible when buying precious metals. The lower price you pay the higher potential return on your investment that you can get. It’s difficult to buy gold at spot price but not impossible.
What is gold spot price?
The gold spot price is the current commodities market price at which gold is bought or sold for immediate payment and delivery. It is what you would pay “on-the-spot” as opposed to some date in the future. In theory, you could pay spot price, or below spot price if you were to buy raw gold before it was minted into a bar or coin.
The gold spot price refers to the price of one troy ounce. It is often quoted in U.S. dollars. The troy ounce is a standard unit of measurement use for precious metals. One troy ounce is defined as exactly 31.1034768 grams (1.097142857143 oz.), but gold prices are often listed as $/oz.
Gold spot prices can be driven by a host of factors such as market speculation, demand for gold, fluctuations in gold futures (paper contracts), currency values, current events (political stability), gold supply (mining), and gold demand (manufacturing and investor).
Gold spot prices are updated every minute as long as one of the markets around the world is open and trading. The most influential global markets are in New York, Chicago, London, Zurich, China, and Hong Kong.
Gold spot price does not take into account any other costs that may be essential to the design, manufacture, transportation, purchase or sale of a precious metal. Those additional costs may including things like packaging, shipping, handling, or insurance. They also don’t factor in the rarity of certain gold products, coins or potential numismatic value.
Expecting to buy a gold coin or bar at the spot price of gold is like expecting to buy a car for the price of the materials. Other factors impact the price of the finished product such as the design and labor, the cost of transporting raw materials and finished products, location, taxes, profit margin, etc.
How are spot prices used?
Companies use gold spot prices to help guide product pricing. However, gold coins, bars, and bullion can sell for varying amounts over spot price due to numerous factors previously mentioned. Additionally, gold coins have other factors that effect the price such as mintage, product types, and rarity on top of the spot price of gold.
Bullion dealers use gold spot price as the basis for pricing many of their products. Dealers price Gold coins, bars and rounds with a premium over gold spot price.
Where can you buy gold at spot price?
While rare, the opportunity to buy gold at spot price does exists. Several online bullion dealers offer 1 oz gold bar for sale at spot price as a special offer for new customers. This is intended as a loss leader for the bullion dealers to acquire new customers.
There are other ways to buy gold at close to spot price, including some that allow you to buy gold below spot price after factoring in various discounts, cash back and rebates.
Choose the type of gold products that will meet your goals
With such a variety of gold bullion products available it can be difficult to decide which products will help you reach your investment or store of wealth goals.
Today’s market is flooded with gold bullion coins from sovereign government mints from around the world and private mints. The market also has a flood of vintage gold bullion coins that were in circulation at a time when economies were based on the gold standard.
Two very important factors to consider include how long you intend to hold on to your gold bullion investment and your intended buyer when you decide to sell down the road.
If transferring cash holdings into another form of legal tender, buying Pre-1933 US Gold Coins, Canadian Gold Maple Leaf coins or American Gold Eagle Coins may be the most practical for you. There are plenty of other vintage gold bullion coin options available that don’t have a current legal tender status, that are just as highly recognized world-wide. These vintage gold bullion coins are easy to sell, such as Gold Franc Coins of the Latin Monetary Union (LMU), Gold Sovereigns from Great Britain, and Gold Peso coins from Mexico.
Keep track of the Gold Spot Price
The gold spot price changes everyday based on the market factors mentioned above. It’s important to keep an eye on rising or falling gold spot prices to identify opportunities to buy and sell to capture profits if that is one of your goals.
Compare Gold Bullion Prices
Once you’ve identified your investment goals and the types of gold bullion products that are important to you, then it’s time to comparison shop across the large number of online bullion dealers.
There are a number of trusted and reputable online bullion dealers. Each dealer prices gold bullion products based on their individual business models. Accordingly, the premiums each dealer charges for the same product can vary dramatically.
Almost every online bullion dealer will carry a core set of common products such as American Gold Eagles, Canadian Gold Maple Leafs, South African Gold Krugerrands, and other sovereign government bullion. You can use FindBullionPrices.com to find the best prices on the gold bullion items you want to buy.
