bullion·compare
Silver /oz$64.72▼ 3.30 (-4.8%)
Gold /oz$4,219.45▼ 102.67 (-2.4%)
Methodology · v0.9 · 2026-05-21

How we measure what bullion dealers charge.

There is no single spot price in the U.S. bullion market. Every online dealer publishes its own spot price on product pages, alongside its own premium. Bullion Compare tracks what each dealer charges and benchmarks it against the lowest published spot across the dealers we follow — what we call the spot floor. We are an independent reference; we don't sell metals, broker trades, or hold customer funds.

What we cover

Bullion Compare currently tracks 7 U.S. online dealers, with more added as the index expands. The current list lives on the Dealers page. To be included, a dealer must be U.S.-based, sell online directly to retail buyers, and publish per-product pricing with a visible spot price. Anyone can suggest a dealer.

What the "spot floor" is

The spot floor is the lowest displayed spot price across all dealers we currently track for a given metal. No external data feed defines it — the dealers themselves do. The lowest displayed spot is a neutral reference point that no dealer can dismiss as arbitrary — it comes from the dealer community itself.

What "spot inflation" means

Spot inflation is how far a dealer's spot drifts above the floor. A dealer with $0.30 spot inflation is building thirty cents per ounce into their "spot" before the premium is even added — so a dealer whose advertised premium is "$2.10/oz over spot" can quietly be $2.25/oz over the floor.

The dealer leaderboard ranks every tracked dealer by their 30-day average spot inflation. It is the single clearest signal of whether a dealer is being straight with you about their pricing.

We measure displayed spot — what the buyer sees at checkout — not the dealer's wholesale cost. Dealers may have legitimate reasons their displayed spot sits above the floor: different upstream feeds, different update cadences, more conservative hedging assumptions. We take no position on intent. We report the gap; you draw conclusions.

A dealer who is the floor on a given snapshot has zero spot inflation for that snapshot. The 30-day average therefore reflects both how often a dealer holds the floor and how far above it they sit when they don't.

What "compared price" means

  • The dealer's listed product price for the quantity tier shown. We track four tiers: 1, 20, 100, and 500 pieces.
  • Wire- or check-payment pricing, which is the dealer's base price without any credit-card surcharge. Most dealers offer roughly 3–4% off list for wire or check; using this tier gives a consistent base across dealers and isolates the true product comparison from payment-method noise.
  • Compared price excludes shipping, sales tax, and payment surcharges. Shipping varies by dealer, order size, and free-shipping thresholds; tax depends on your state. We report the listed product cost — landed cost is yours to compute.
  • If a product is out of stock at a given dealer, we omit them from that product's row, not the whole grid.

How often we update

Bullion Compare separates two clocks:

  • Market spot — the live reference price for gold and silver, updated every minute. This is what powers the ticker at the top of every page.
  • Dealer spot offset and product premiums — each dealer's displayed spot tracks the market with an offset; their per-product premiums sit on top of that. We refresh each dealer's offset and premiums twelve times a day, roughly every two hours.

Computing spot inflation against the live market — rather than against a competitor's snapshot timestamp — keeps the comparison time-aligned: every dealer's inflation is measured against the same market moment, not against a price one of their competitors happened to display thirty minutes earlier. If a dealer's offset or premium hasn't refreshed recently, we surface that next to the price as last updated 42m ago — we never hide a stale price by silently removing the row.

What we don't include

  • Brick-and-mortar dealers (different pricing dynamics).
  • Auction houses, eBay, or peer-to-peer marketplaces.
  • Numismatic or proof coins. We track bullion strikes only.
  • Cryptocurrency payment options (not standardized enough for fair comparison).

Limitations we acknowledge

  • Our floor is the floor among the dealers we track. Adding a new dealer with consistently lower spot would lower the floor and raise everyone's measured inflation.
  • Spot offsets refresh every two hours. A dealer who adjusts between refreshes will show a stale offset until the next pull.
  • We don't measure landed cost. A dealer with a higher list price but free shipping over $199 may be cheaper than our comparison suggests for orders above that threshold.
  • We track bullion strikes only — limited mintages, sealed monster boxes, and bullion with collector premiums may price differently than what we show here.

How to report an error

If a price on this site disagrees with what you see on a dealer's website at the moment you check, email us at [email protected] with a screenshot and a timestamp. We respond within one business day and publish a correction log monthly.

Last methodology revision: 2026-05-21. Material changes are versioned and announced on the home page.