Gold Maple Leaf Prices & Premiums — Live Comparison Across 10 US Dealers

The Gold Maple Leaf is a bullion coin produced by the Royal Canadian Mint, first struck in 1979. It was the second modern gold bullion coin — introduced twelve years after the Krugerrand (1967) and seven years before the American Gold Eagle (1986). Its defining feature is .9999 fine gold purity (24 karat), which made it the first major bullion coin to achieve that standard when the Mint raised purity from .999 in late 1982. Most major competitors use a 22-karat alloy: the American Gold Eagle and Krugerrand are both .9167 fine.

The obverse carries the reigning monarch's portrait — Queen Elizabeth II through 2023, King Charles III from 2024 onward. The reverse depicts Canada's sugar maple leaf, essentially unchanged since 1979. Security features added since 2013 include radial lines, a laser-engraved micro maple leaf privy mark, and the Mint's Bullion DNA anti-counterfeiting program. Gold Maple Leafs are legal tender in Canada (face values from $1 to $50, purely nominal) and meet the .995+ fineness threshold for US precious metals IRAs.

BullionMetric currently tracks 243 distinct Gold Maple Leaf products across 10 dealers, with 128 in stock. That's the deepest catalog of any Tier A category page on the site. They break down into clear groups:

1 oz coins (the standard comparison unit). 182 products tracked, 53 currently in stock. This is the core of the catalog — individual coins from 1979 through 2025, sold as "random year" (dealer picks the year, nearly always the lowest-premium option) or a specific year. Random year is what BullionMetric uses as the standard cross-dealer comparison SKU. Today's 1 oz random-year premiums range from 0.55% to 5.34% over spot.

1/2 oz coins. 63 products tracked, 15 in stock. Per-ounce premiums jump noticeably at this size — today's cheapest in-stock 1/2 oz listing (SD Bullion) runs 7.50% over spot, versus under 2% for the cheapest 1 oz coin. The premium escalation reflects higher per-unit minting and handling costs, not a gold-content difference.

1/4 oz coins. 78 products tracked, 23 in stock. Premiums start around 2.7% (Bullion Exchanges, if in stock) and climb to 17% at some dealers. A reasonable mid-point entry for buyers not ready for a $4,000+ single purchase.

1/10 oz coins. 101 products tracked, 32 in stock. Premiums range from roughly 6% to over 54% over spot depending on dealer and vintage. The per-ounce cost penalty at this size is severe — a 1/10 oz coin at 15% premium costs the buyer approximately $60 more per ounce of gold content than a 1 oz coin at 2%.

1/20 oz coins. 51 products tracked, only 5 in stock — all from APMEX. This is effectively a single-dealer monopoly at this size. The cheapest in-stock 1/20 oz listing runs 47.3% over spot ($299.67 for ~$203 of gold content). The 1/20 oz is the smallest fractional offered by any major sovereign-mint gold bullion program, but the premium makes it primarily useful as a gifting denomination or entry point for buyers who want a sovereign-minted gold coin below $300.

Tubes and rolls. 17 tube products (10 coins per tube) tracked, none currently in stock. When available, per-coin pricing on tubes sometimes runs slightly below the equivalent single-coin price. Check the per-ounce premium, not the tube sticker price.

Condition variants. Several dealers list "scruffy," "abrasions," or "varied condition" versions — same gold content, cosmetic wear, lower premium. Hero Bullion's "scruffy" 1 oz listing at 1.06% is currently the second-cheapest in-stock option behind Bullion Exchanges.

The short answer changes daily — check the live table above. The more useful answer requires nuance:

Bullion Exchanges wins on listed price most of the time. Over the last 27 tracked days, Bullion Exchanges had the lowest in-stock premium on a 1 oz random-year Gold Maple Leaf on 23 days (85%). No other dealer won more than once.

But Bullion Exchanges is almost never in stock. Their Gold Maple Leaf in-stock rate over the last 30 days is 4.2% — meaning on any given check, there's roughly a 1-in-25 chance their listed price is actually available. A price you can't buy at isn't a real price.

The reliably available cheapest dealers are different names. When you filter for dealers with consistent stock:

*GoldenStateMint shows 100% but on a very small observation set (9 data points). The rate is directionally reliable but the sample is thin.

GoldenStateMint and SD Bullion are the most interesting combination: relatively low premiums (2.22% and 2.62% medians) with at least moderate availability. Neither is always in stock, but both are substantially more available than Bullion Exchanges at substantially lower premiums than SilverGoldBull (3.90% median, the most expensive tracked dealer for this category).

A note on the prior JM Bullion finding. An earlier BullionMetric audit flagged JM Bullion as running +9 percentage points above peer median on Gold Maple Leafs. Current 30-day data doesn't replicate that finding — JM Bullion's 3.19% median sits mid-pack, between APMEX (3.42%) and Provident Metals (2.98%). The gap may have closed, or the earlier measurement may have used a different methodology. Either way, the current data doesn't support calling JM Bullion an outlier on this category.

Because Gold Maple Leafs are .9999 fine (24 karat), the coin weight equals the gold content — there's no alloy weight to account for. This differs from 22-karat coins like the American Gold Eagle and Krugerrand, where the 1 oz coin contains exactly 1 troy ounce of gold but the coin itself weighs more than 1 troy ounce due to the copper alloy.

BullionMetric pulls live pricing and stock status from 10 US dealers multiple times daily. Premiums are calculated against gold spot at the time of each price check. The "days lowest" and "in-stock rate" stats above are computed from 30-day rolling price history, not a single snapshot. Full methodology.

Gold Maple Leafs sit alongside several other sovereign-mint gold coins worth comparing on premium and availability: