How Much Over Spot Should You Pay for Gold? What 10 Dealers Actually Charged

About this page. BullionMetric tracks daily pricing from every major US online bullion dealer and calculates the premium over spot on every listing. The figures below are measured, not estimated: they come from in-stock prices at 10 dealers, measured against an independent reference spot price from July 9 to August 31, 2026, and cross-checked against September 1 to October 7. How we track premiums →

Disclosure. BullionMetric has no affiliate or commercial relationship with any dealer named on this page, and no dealer pays for placement or rankings. If we join affiliate programs in the future, we'll say so on this page and on our affiliate disclosure page, with the date it began.

The short answer

For a 1 oz gold bullion coin or bar bought online in 2026, a fair premium is roughly 2–5% over spot, depending on the product. Across 10 tracked US dealers, the median premiums we measured were:

Dollar figures are at the window's spot range of roughly $4,000–$4,650 per ounce.

Three things move the number more than anything else:

1. Which coin. The same ounce of gold cost about $100 more as an American Gold Eagle than as a Krugerrand.
2. Which dealer. On a 1 oz Gold Eagle, median listed premiums ranged from $57 to $281 over spot across tracked dealers. Even among dealers whose listings were usually in stock, the gap was about $42 per coin.
3. What size. A 1/10 oz Gold Eagle carried a 26% premium. Buying an ounce of gold that way costs about four times the premium of a single 1 oz coin.

If a quote for a 1 oz bullion coin or bar is over 7%, and it isn't a Buffalo, you are overpaying. Check another dealer.

What "over spot" means when buying gold

Spot is the wholesale price of one troy ounce of pure gold for immediate delivery. Dealers buy and sell large bars around this number. Premium over spot is everything you pay above the value of the gold in your coin or bar: minting, refining, distribution, dealer margin and, for some coins, brand demand.

The formula:

Premium % = (Price paid − Gold value) ÷ Gold value × 100 Gold value = gold weight in troy ounces × spot price

Worked example. Gold spot is $4,400. A dealer lists a 1 oz Krugerrand at $4,560.

• Gold value: 1 oz × $4,400 = $4,400
• Premium: $4,560 − $4,400 = $160
• Premium %: $160 ÷ $4,400 = 3.6%

That is right at the market median for a Krugerrand in our data, so it's a fair but not exceptional price.

One detail trips people up. Use the coin's gold content, not its total weight. A Krugerrand weighs 1.09 oz because it is 22-karat alloy, but it contains exactly 1 oz of gold. A pre-1933 $20 Saint-Gaudens contains 0.9675 oz. Dealers list gold content; use that.

You cannot buy physical gold at spot. Anyone advertising "gold at spot" is either losing money on a limited promotion or recovering it elsewhere, through shipping, payment fees or the next sale.

Fair premium by product, measured

Here is the full picture for 1 oz bullion coins and bars, including how much the dealer you choose matters. "Lowest dealer" and "highest dealer" are the lowest and highest per-dealer median premiums among dealers with at least 15 days of in-stock data.

The lowest dealer median in several rows belongs to BullionExchanges, which had only about 14% of its tracked 1 oz gold coin listings in stock over the last 30 days. Its listed prices are real, but often not buyable. The section on dealers below covers this.

The cheapest gold per ounce is old US gold. Pre-1933 $20 Liberty and Saint-Gaudens double eagles ran a median of 1.95% over their gold content, lower than any modern bullion coin. These are circulated, uncertified coins sold at near-melt prices, and they are a long-standing stacker favorite for exactly this reason. Make sure you are buying common-date, ungraded examples; certified or rare-date pieces are priced as collectibles and are a different market.

Non-US sovereign coins cluster at 3.5–4.5%. Krugerrands, Philharmonics, Maples, Britannias, Kangaroos and Pandas all sit in a tight band. For most buyers, these are interchangeable ways to own an ounce of gold, and the Krugerrand was consistently the cheapest of the widely available ones.

US Mint coins carry a brand premium. The American Gold Eagle ran about 2.5 points above the Krugerrand, and the Buffalo about 5 points above. Some of that comes back when you sell, because Eagles are the most recognized gold coin in the US and dealers often bid more for them. We don't yet track buyback prices, so we can't tell you how much. Buyers who want Eagles specifically should pay the Eagle premium knowingly, not by default.

Random year vs. dated coins: an easy 1–2 points

"Random year" (also sold as "date of our choice") means the dealer picks the mint year. You get the same gold, the same coin design and the same purity. Across every major coin, random-year listings were cheaper:

On a Gold Eagle at $4,400 spot, 1.36 points is about $60 per coin. Unless you collect by year, random year is the default choice for buying gold as metal.

Same coin, different dealer: the 1 oz Gold Eagle

The most-searched gold coin in the US, and the clearest case for comparing dealers before buying.

*GoldenStateMint is a private mint with a narrow retail catalog (roughly two dozen tracked products). Our tracking records its listings as in stock, but we have not been able to verify that its stock signal reflects real availability, so we don't report an in-stock rate for it.

The in-stock column is the share of each dealer's tracked 1 oz gold coin listings (across Eagles, Maples, Krugerrands, Philharmonics, Buffalos and pre-1933) that were in stock over the last 30 days. Deep-catalog dealers list many dated and back-year coins that are rarely in stock, which pulls their rate down. Read it as a rough signal of how often a listed price turns into a completed order.

The pattern: cheap listings and reliable stock rarely come from the same dealer. The two lowest-premium dealers on Gold Eagles, BullionExchanges and Hero Bullion, had stock on about one in seven of their gold coin listings. GoldenStateMint and SilverGoldBull also listed Eagles well below the market, but GoldenStateMint's stock is unverified and SilverGoldBull's listings were in stock about a fifth of the time. Among dealers with most of their listings in stock, BGASC was cheapest at 5.88%.

What that's worth. Among dealers whose listings were in stock most of the time, BGASC's median Gold Eagle premium was $239 over spot and Money Metals Exchange's was $281. That is $42 per coin, or $420 on a ten-coin purchase, for the identical product. If a lower-premium dealer has the coin in stock when you check, the saving widens: Hero Bullion's median was $141, or $140 per coin below Money Metals. The large retailers (APMEX, JM Bullion, Money Metals) all sat at or above the market median on Gold Eagles. That doesn't make them bad dealers; they win on catalog depth, payment options and stock reliability. But on price alone, they are rarely where a 1 oz Gold Eagle is cheapest.

The daily winner changes. For today's prices, use the live Gold Eagle tracker →

Are gold bars cheaper than gold coins?

Yes, but less than most guides suggest, and only at larger sizes. At 1 oz, a refiner bar (3.72% median) cost about the same as a Krugerrand (3.65%) and less than Maples, Philharmonics and especially Eagles. Bars pull clearly ahead once you go bigger:

A 1 oz bar's cheapest-dealer medians ran from 1.17% (BullionExchanges, with the stock caveat above) through 2.05% (GoldenStateMint, stock unverified), 2.64% (Hero Bullion) and 2.76% (SilverGoldBull), up to 4.29% at JM Bullion.

When a bar is the better choice: you're buying 10 oz or more at a time, you're comfortable with an assay card as your proof of authenticity, and you don't need the flexibility to sell one ounce at a time.

When a 1 oz coin is the better choice: you want government-guaranteed weight and purity, broad recognition at any dealer or coin shop, and the ability to sell small amounts. At 1 oz, a Krugerrand or Philharmonic gives you that at bar-level premiums.

Fractional gold: the most expensive way to buy an ounce

Small coins cost almost as much to mint and ship as large ones, so the premium per ounce climbs fast as size drops. American Gold Eagles by size:

Buying one ounce of gold as ten 1/10 oz Eagles cost about $1,110 in premium, compared with $261 for a single 1 oz coin. Fractionals have real uses: a smaller budget, gifting, or wanting small units for barter or partial sales. Buy them for those reasons, not as the default.

Percent or dollars: which to watch

Premiums are usually quoted as a percentage, but you pay them in dollars, and gold's price level changes what a percentage means. At $4,400 spot, each percentage point on a 1 oz coin is about $44. A 2-point difference between two dealers is $88 per ounce.

Two practical consequences:

• Compare dealers in percent, budget in dollars. Percent makes products and dealers comparable across days; dollars tell you what the choice actually costs.
• Don't assume premiums fall when gold falls. In our longer tracking history, gold's percentage premium rose during price declines, because dealers reprice their markup more slowly than spot moves. A dip in spot is not automatically a cheaper time to buy once the premium is counted.

How much over spot should you pay for gold jewelry?

"Percent over spot" isn't a useful test for jewelry, and we don't track it. Jewelry is priced on design, labor and retail margin, and the gold is usually 10–18 karat alloy rather than pure.

What you can calculate is the melt value, the floor below which no jeweler will sell:

Melt value = weight in grams × karat purity × (spot ÷ 31.1035)

Purity is 0.417 for 10k, 0.585 for 14k, 0.750 for 18k and 0.999 for 24k. A 10-gram 14k chain at $4,400 spot contains about $828 of gold. Everything above that is what you're paying for the piece rather than the metal. If your goal is owning gold as metal, bullion coins and bars are a far cheaper way to do it.

A 30-second test for any gold quote

1. Find the gold content. It's in the product listing, in troy ounces.
2. Multiply by today's spot to get the gold value.
3. Subtract from the quoted price to get the dollar premium, then divide by the gold value for the percentage.
4. Compare to the table at the top of this page. At or below "good price" is a good deal. Above "shop around" means another dealer almost certainly has it cheaper.
5. Add the costs that aren't in the listed price. Most online dealers charge 3–4% more for credit card payment than for bank wire or check, and some add shipping on smaller orders. A card surcharge can turn a good premium into a bad one.

The comparison step is what the BullionMetric gold trackers do automatically, across every tracked dealer, every day.

Lowest-premium gold coins right now

Live premiums for every product on this page, updated daily across all tracked dealers:

• Pre-1933 US gold →
• Gold Krugerrands →
• Gold Philharmonics →
• Gold Maple Leafs →
• American Gold Eagles →
• American Gold Buffalos →
• British Gold Sovereigns →

Buying silver instead? Where is the cheapest place to buy silver →

How we measured this

BullionMetric records the listed price and stock status of every tracked product at 10 US online dealers roughly five days a week: APMEX, BGASC, BullionExchanges, GoldenStateMint, Hero Bullion, JM Bullion, Money Metals Exchange, Provident Metals, SD Bullion and SilverGoldBull. Kitco is tracked but did not list 1 oz gold bullion in this window.

The main figures cover July 9 to August 31, 2026, roughly 40–48 observation days per dealer. Premiums are measured against an independent reference spot price (the midpoint of each day's gold price range) rather than each dealer's own displayed spot, so that dealers are compared on the same footing. Dealer-displayed spot ran slightly above the reference, so premiums against a dealer's own spot read about 0.4 points lower.

For September 1 to October 7, 2026, we cross-checked the same products against dealer-displayed spot. Medians moved by less than half a point and the order of products did not change (Gold Eagle 5.76% in both periods on that basis).

What's included: in-stock listings only, 1 oz bullion (0.95–1.05 troy oz of gold content, which includes $20 pre-1933 coins and 30 g Pandas), premiums between 0% and 300%. What's excluded: graded and certified coins, proofs, burnished and special-finish coins, privy and limited editions, listings marked damaged or cleaned, and multi-coin tubes and boxes. Medians are calculated across individual observations. Full methodology →