The silver spot price is determined by the price of 1,000 oz (roughly!) "good delivery bars," delivered/traded on the NY COMEX exchange. (For gold, I believe they are 400 oz bars.)Certainly a warning of a potential false market.
That is not at all what I expected to read. With the tremendous runup in prices for each I would have expected that dealers could not keep them in inventory and were constantly trying to acquire more inventory.
Sellers can't get to buyers. That creates artificial scarcity. How big, I don't know.
That is not necessarily the same as what a local coin shop, jeweler, or pawn shop will pay you for a 1 oz silver round, pre-1964 U.S. silver coins, or random silverware/jewelry -- especially when prices are this volatile. This does not mean the coin dealer is ripping you off (the pawn shop probably is!) -- but if they buy from you for $X, spot could drop quite a bit between then and when they get it to a smelter (to turn those coins or silverware into 1,000 oz bars).
That said, there is usually a way to get relatively close to spot price. The exception I have heard now is sub-.999 silver -- refineries are running full bore and don't really want Sterling (.925) silver as I assume it slows down the process (I am not a smelter).
Statistics: Posted by Atgard — Tue Jan 20, 2026 10:46 am — Replies 73 — Views 3243