Where Do You Get Your Spots?

 Where Do You Get Your Precious Metals Spot Prices?



That's a very common question we get, even in quiet times, but especially in active times when the market is moving rapidly.    The "Spot" price is the live market price for the raw metal used when computing how much a physical precious metals item will cost you to buy or what you'd get when selling yours.  Unlike the "Futures" Market, (paper contracts for metals delivery at some future point in time),  the "Spot Market" price is the current physical delivery price for 1,000oz bars of silver or 400oz bars of gold.  And like all commodities markets, whether gold, soybeans or orange juice, there is a BID and ASK price.

Why do I see different Spot prices on different websites?  Since the physical Spot price is derived from markets that are constantly changing all throughout the day & night, it's normal to see very minor differences on different sites, usually less than $10/oz on Gold and 15-20 cents per oz on Silver. This is often dependent on that particular sites refresh rate or how often its feed pulls live prices.  But more often, the question arises because we see a slightly larger variation in a particular sites that are quite noticeable.  This is usually caused by the individual site's intentional company decision.  If you are an online company that primarily SELLS to the public, or rarely buys from the public, they will choose to show only the ASK side of the Spots. The ASK side is higher of course, and since they're selling, it's the more appropriate "Spot".  It will have only one price for each metal and will look like this:



Many times though, a site will show both the BID and ASK prices that they are using.  If they are Buying, then the BID Spot will be used in computing the value of the item being offered.  If they are Selling, then the ASK Spot will be used in computing the cost of the item being sold.   That will look like this: BID/ASK



Where do WE get the Spots that we use?   We get our Bid/Ask Spots from the dealer portal of one or more of the very large bullion distributors we deal with.  The US Mint has only 12 primary distributors around the world that are authorized to purchase bullion directly from the Mint. We have been dealing directly with 3 of those primary distributors since 1986 when the American Eagle Gold & Silver coin program first began.  When we are buying from the public, we use the Bid Spot we see on their portal. When we are selling to the public, we use the Ask Spot. It works that way all up and down the supply  chain, when we are buying from the distributor, they use their Ask Spot, and so on.


One last personal note:  We don't buy or sell merchandise on our website, and while we have a Spot metals price feed posted there to use as a general reference guide, that feed is a bit wonky and doesn't always work to my satisfaction.  One of these days we will get around to some major site improvements that satisfies the need for accuracy, reliability and timeliness, but in the meantime, we are happy to quote our current Bid or Ask Spot price and any relevant merchandise Buy or Sell price quotes, just ask us!



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