How Much Over Spot Should You Pay for Silver? We Tracked 9 Dealers for 90 Days

About this page. BullionMetric records the price and stock status of every listing at the major US online bullion dealers, most days of the week. Everything below comes from in-stock prices at 9 dealers between July 10 and October 7, 2026, measured against an independent reference spot price. No estimates, no rules of thumb. 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.

Here's a number most silver buyers never work out.

Take a 500-ounce monster box of random-year Silver Eagles. Among the dealers we track that usually had them in stock, the typical premium ranged from $11.03 to $14.30 an ounce. That's $1,635 between the cheapest and the most expensive, for the same coins, from the same mint, in the same green box.

So what's a fair price? It depends on what you're buying, and the gap between products is bigger than the gap between dealers. One simple choice saves more than any amount of dealer shopping. We'll get to it.

The short answer

Silver buyers talk in dollars per ounce, so that's how we measured. With silver between $55 and $69 over the 90 days, here's what dealers typically charged above spot:

"Good price" is what the cheaper dealers typically charged. "Shop around above" is more than even the most expensive major dealers typically charged. With silver near $60, each dollar per ounce is about 1.7 percentage points.

If someone quotes you more than $14 an ounce over spot for a random-year Silver Eagle, or more than $11 for any other random-year 1 oz coin, walk away. Another dealer almost certainly has it cheaper.

Check any quote in 30 seconds

You don't need a calculator app. You need two numbers: the price and today's spot.

Premium per ounce = (Price ÷ ounces of silver) − spot

Say spot is $60.00 and a dealer lists a random-year 1 oz Silver Maple Leaf at $69.30. That's $9.30 over spot. Right at the market median.

Fair? Yes. Good? No. Two of the dealers we track typically sold random-year Maples for under $6 over spot.

Three things to watch:

• Use silver content, not weight or face value. Circulated pre-1965 US dimes, quarters and halves hold about 0.715 oz of silver per $1 of face value. A $10 face bag is about 7.15 oz.
• Check the payment price. Most dealers charge 3–4% more for card than for bank wire or check. On silver, that's $2 or more an ounce, which is enough to turn a good premium into a bad one.
• Add shipping and tax. Free shipping thresholds and state sales tax rules vary, and both land on small orders hardest.

Why silver costs so much more over spot than gold

A random-year Silver Eagle carried a 19% premium in our data. A random-year Gold Eagle carried under 5%.

The reason is boring, and it's real. It costs roughly the same to strike, package, ship and insure a coin whatever metal it's made of. Spread those costs over a $60 coin and they're a big slice. Spread them over a $4,000 coin and they barely show.

Silver is also heavy for what it's worth. A thousand dollars of silver weighs about a pound. A thousand dollars of gold weighs about a quarter of an ounce. Weight costs money to move.

That's why the cheapest silver per ounce comes in forms that skip the minting: junk coins that are already in circulation, and big bars that spread one pour across many ounces.

The one choice that saves more than dealer shopping

Buy random year.

Every coin listing on a dealer site is one of two things. A specific year ("2026 Silver Eagle"), or random year, also sold as "date of our choice." Same silver, same design, same purity. Only the date stamp differs, and the date carries a collector premium.

Here's what that premium cost in practice:

On Silver Eagles, the median across all listings, including specific dated years, was $20.28 over spot. Random year alone: $12.07. That's $8.21 an ounce, more than twice the $3.27 gap between the cheapest and priciest dealers that usually had stock.

A few more things the table shows:

• The Kangaroo, Philharmonic, Krugerrand, Maple and Britannia are interchangeable on price. In random year they sat within a dollar of each other. Over 15 months of tracking, the Philharmonic was cheapest most months (full findings). Over these 90 days, the Kangaroo and Philharmonic finished within a third of a point.
• The Silver Eagle costs about $3 an ounce more than its peers. That's a US brand premium. Some of it may come back when you sell, since Eagles are the most recognized silver coin in the country, but we don't track buyback prices yet, so we can't tell you how much. Pay it on purpose, not by default.
• Annual-design coins are priced for collectors. Kookaburras, Pandas and especially Libertads ran well above bullion premiums even in random year. (The Panda and Libertad figures rest on fewer than 100 observations each, so treat them as indicative.)

If you collect dated coins, none of this is a criticism. Just know you're paying for the date, not the silver.

Same Silver Eagle, $3.27 an ounce apart

Now the dealers. Here's the typical random-year Silver Eagle premium at each one:

*GoldenStateMint is a private mint with a narrow retail catalog. 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. †Kitco lists few 1 oz silver coins (59 listing-days in 30 days), so its rate rests on a small sample.

The in-stock column covers each dealer's 1 oz silver coin listings across Eagles, Maples, Britannias, Kangaroos, Krugerrands and Philharmonics, all years. Deep catalogs list lots of dated coins that are rarely in stock, which pulls their rate down. Random-year Silver Eagles themselves were in stock almost everywhere, almost every day.

On a 500-ounce monster box, that's $1,635 between Money Metals Exchange ($11.03) and Provident Metals ($14.30), for identical coins. APMEX, at $14.05, sat near the top too.

But don't pick a dealer for everything based on one coin. Money Metals was cheapest on Silver Eagles and among the most expensive on random-year Maples ($10.57), where Hero Bullion ($5.24) and APMEX ($5.84) were cheapest. The winner changes by product and by day.

See today's lowest premiums across every dealer →

Silver premiums are falling

This is the part a 90-day snapshot can hide. The typical premium didn't sit still.

From $13.01 in July to $9.64 in early October. That's a quarter off the premium in three months.

Two things follow from that:

• Compare in percent, budget in dollars. When spot jumped in August, the percentage premium dropped five points. The dollar premium fell only $1.36. Percent makes dealers comparable. Dollars are what you actually pay.
• A quote that was fair in July isn't fair now. The thresholds at the top of this page cover all 90 days. If premiums keep falling, "good" falls with them. The live comparison is always the current reference.

Bars, rounds or junk: what's cheapest per ounce

Compare the same dealer over the same period and the order holds every time:

Junk silver. Then 100 oz bars. Then generic rounds and 10 oz bars. Then sovereign coins. Then Silver Eagles.

That's the same order we found over 15 months of tracking (full findings).

Junk silver is the cheapest ounce you can buy, at a median $3.61 over spot. The trade-offs: it comes in odd amounts, the coins are worn, and stock is thin. Only four of the nine dealers had it in stock during this period. If you want metal and don't care how it looks, start here.

100 oz bars are the cheapest new silver, but the dealer matters a lot. Hero Bullion's typical premium was $3.65 an ounce. JM Bullion's was $7.89. APMEX's was $8.74. Stick to well-known refiners if you want an easy resale.

Skip 1 oz bars. At $10.91 over spot, they cost more than random-year sovereign coins, which come with a government guarantee of weight and purity. For one-ounce pieces, buy rounds or random-year coins.

Can you buy silver at spot?

No. Not in any amount that matters. Every physical ounce carries the cost of making, moving and selling it.

The closest you'll get:

• Junk silver, at about $3–4 over spot.
• Dealer promotions that sell a coin or two at or near spot, usually one per customer and often first-time buyers only.
• Private sales between stackers, which can come in near dealer buyback prices but carry counterparty risk and no dealer guarantee.

The realistic goal is the low end of the normal range: under about $3 an ounce for junk, $7 for a 100 oz bar, and $7.50 for a random-year sovereign coin.

Today's lowest premiums

Everything above is a 90-day picture. These pages show today's prices across every dealer we track, updated daily:

• Junk silver →
• Silver rounds →
• Silver Philharmonics →
• Silver Kangaroos →
• Silver Krugerrands →
• Silver Maple Leafs →
• Silver Britannias →
• American Silver Eagles →

Buying gold too? How much over spot to pay for gold →

How we measured this

BullionMetric records the listed price and stock status of every tracked product at US online dealers roughly five days a week. Nine dealers listed silver in this period: APMEX, BGASC, GoldenStateMint, Hero Bullion, JM Bullion, Kitco, Money Metals Exchange, Provident Metals and SD Bullion.

The figures cover July 10 to October 7, 2026. No prices were collected September 29 to October 2 because of a data-collection outage, so the window holds about 60 observation days. Premiums are measured against an independent reference spot price (the midpoint of each day's silver price range) rather than each dealer's own displayed spot, so every dealer is compared on the same footing.

Included: in-stock listings only, premiums between 0% and 300%, 1 oz coins and rounds weighing 0.95–1.05 troy oz (including 30 g Pandas), bars of 1, 5, 10, 32.15 and 100 oz, and 90% junk silver measured per ounce of silver content. "Random year" means listings sold as random year or date of the dealer's choice. Excluded: graded and certified coins, proofs, burnished and special-finish coins, privy, colorized and limited editions, gift and holiday packaging, listings marked damaged or cleaned, and multi-coin tubes, rolls and boxes. Medians are calculated across individual observations. Dealer comparisons use each dealer's own median. Full methodology →