What did you pay over spot?

What is the premium over spot?

Spot is the price of an abstract ounce: a number agreed in a market where almost nobody takes delivery. The ounce you can hold has to be dug up, refined, assayed, struck into a recognizable shape, insured, stored, shipped and sold to you by somebody who would like to eat. The premium is the sum of all of that, plus whatever the seller thinks the market will bear this week.

So the premium is not a fee you were tricked into paying. It is the price of the difference between owning a metal and owning a claim on one, which is a difference many people buy metal specifically to have. It is worth knowing its size, though, because it is the one number in the transaction that is entirely invisible on a price chart.

Why silver premiums look so much worse than gold premiums

Because most of what a premium pays for is work, and work is priced per coin rather than per dollar. Striking a one-ounce coin costs roughly the same whether the ounce inside is silver or gold. Spread that fixed cost over $3,997 of gold and it disappears into the rounding. Spread it over $54.05 of silver and it is a visible slice of the purchase.

The same arithmetic explains why premiums fall as the unit gets bigger. One hundred ounces in a single cast bar takes one pour, one assay and one label; one hundred ounces in one-ounce coins takes a hundred of everything. It is the reason a ten-ounce bar and ten one-ounce coins holding identical metal can be priced several percent apart, and the reason small divisible silver — the kind people actually want in a drawer — is the most expensive way to buy an ounce.

None of which tells you what to buy. It tells you what you are paying for, which is a different and more useful thing: divisibility and recognizability cost money, and the question is whether you want them.

What is my break-even price?

Your break-even spot price is exactly your cost per ounce, and it is the number worth remembering instead of the headline you paid. If you bought ten ounces of silver for $610 all-in, your break-even is $61.00, and every chart you look at afterward should be read against that line rather than against the price on the day you bought.

There is a catch, and it is the honest half of this page. Break-even at spot is not break-even in practice. You buy at a premium over spot and you sell at a discount to it, because the dealer on the other side has to make a margin in both directions. The true round trip is your purchase premium plus the selling spread, and on small silver that combination can run to a double-digit percentage before the metal has moved at all.

This is the bear case for the thing this site is generally sympathetic to, and it belongs on the page rather than in a footnote. Physical metal carries a transaction cost that a screen position does not. What it buys in exchange is the absence of a counterparty, which is either worth the spread or it is not, depending entirely on why you bought it.

Which forms carry the lowest premium?

The structural answer, which does not change with the market: premium per ounce falls as the unit of metal gets larger and as the object gets simpler. A large cast bar is the cheapest ounce; a small minted bar costs more; a sovereign-minted coin costs more again, because a government guarantee and a legal-tender face value are themselves a product. Anything described as a limited edition, a collectible or a special finish is being sold on something other than its metal.

What that costs you is not fixed, so this page will not quote a number it cannot source. Run your own purchase through the calculator above, then run the alternative you were considering, and the comparison is yours rather than somebody's marketing. If the metal in question is old US coinage, the junk silver calculator will tell you the melt value to compare against.

Worked examples

• A 1 oz silver coin bought for $65 carries a premium of $10.95, or 20.3% over spot. Spot has to reach $65.00 before the coin is worth what it cost.
• A 10 oz silver bar bought for $570 works out at $57.00 an ounce, a premium of $29.50, or 5.5%.
• A 1 oz gold coin bought for $4,200 carries a premium of $203.10, or 5.1% over spot.
• $100 face of 90% junk silver bought for $4,080 is 71.5 ounces of silver at $57.06 an ounce, a premium of $215.43, or 5.6%.

The prices paid are examples, not quotes from any dealer. Spot is the stored price from October 24, 2026 ($3,996.90 gold, $54.05 silver); the calculator uses the live price when it loads.

Common questions

What is the premium over spot?

The premium is the difference between what you paid for a physical coin or bar and what the metal inside it is worth at the spot price. It covers refining, minting, assay, insurance, shipping and the seller's margin. If you pay $61 an ounce for silver when spot is $54.05 — spot on October 24, 2026 — the premium is $6.95 an ounce, or 12.9%. The calculator above uses today’s price.

How do I calculate my premium over spot?

Add up everything you paid, including shipping, tax and fees, and divide by the number of troy ounces of metal you received. That is your true cost per ounce. Subtract the spot price and you have the premium per ounce; divide that by spot and you have it as a percentage.

What is my break-even price on gold or silver?

Your break-even spot price is the same as your all-in cost per ounce. If you paid $610 for ten ounces of silver, your break-even is $61.00 an ounce. Note that this is break-even against spot, not against what a dealer would pay you, which is normally below spot.

Why is the premium on silver so much higher than on gold?

Because most of what a premium pays for is fabrication, and fabrication costs roughly the same per coin whatever metal is inside. The same few dollars of minting cost is a rounding error against an ounce of gold and a visible percentage against an ounce of silver. The same effect makes large bars cheaper per ounce than small coins.

Do I get the premium back when I sell?

Usually not in full. Dealers buy below spot and sell above it, so a round trip costs you the purchase premium plus the selling spread. Some products with strong recognition hold part of their premium on resale and some hold almost none. Treat the premium as a cost of entry rather than as part of the value of the holding.

Does this calculator store my holdings?

Nothing is sent anywhere, and there is no account. Your browser remembers your last entries on this device, so they are still there when you come back, and they never leave it. Clearing this site's data in your browser erases them.

Why do silver coins cost more than silver bars?

Coins cost more to make per ounce. A mint strikes each one individually, often as legal tender with a detailed design, while a large bar is mostly metal with little finishing. Smaller pieces also carry more handling and shipping cost per ounce, and well-known government coins carry brand demand. The premium covers all of that, and you may get some of it back when you sell.

Do gold bars have lower premiums than gold coins?

Usually, per ounce, yes, and larger bars usually less than small ones, because the cost of making and selling a piece is spread over more metal. Well-known coins can be easier to sell, though, so some buyers accept a higher premium for them. Enter two quotes in the calculator above to see the difference in dollars and percent.

Do you pay sales tax or VAT on gold and silver?

It depends on where you live. In the US it is set state by state, and many states exempt bullion, sometimes only above a set purchase amount. In the UK and the European Union, investment gold is VAT-free while silver is generally taxed. Canada exempts gold and silver of at least 99.5% purity from GST and HST. Check your own jurisdiction's current rules before you buy.