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Why the buy price and the sell price are different
The gap is the shop. Rent, cash, risk, testing, and the fact they have to still be here tomorrow. Spot is not a store.
People point at the board and say: “You’re buying gold at X and selling it at Y. That’s a lot.”
Yes. That gap is the store.
Spot is a wholesale idea between big boys with wires and leverage. A shop is a room with a door, a safe, a scale, insurance, and a person who has to say yes when you want to sell two eagles on a Tuesday.
What the spread is paying for
- The cash sitting in the safe so they can buy from you today
- The risk that spot dumps while your gold is still in the case
- Testing, fakes, mistakes, tungsten
- The fact they will still sell it to the next person for a little more than they paid you
- Lights. Rent. The kid on the register.
Premiums and spreads if you want the vocabulary. How shops price at the counter if you want the whole board.
When the gap gets wider
Chaos. Huge volume. Weekend. After the futures pit is closed. Weekend and after-hours spot. Spreads when markets go crazy.
A shop that keeps a tight spread in a hurricane is either huge or about to have a bad month.
“Highest prices in town”
If two shops are both honest, their bids will be close on common bullion and farther apart on weird stuff. If one shop is always magically highest on everything, read the sign again. Those window signs.
Get a second bid. Second opinion, same week. Do not treat a $4 difference on a $2,400 eagle like a moral event.
Part of the coin shop counter wiki · visitors & collectors · NumisQ Learn