Methodology

What you see on every page

Each canonical bullion product gets one page. We pull current offers from reputable retail dealers, normalize the price for the default scenario (1 unit, wire or ACH payment, shipping excluded), and rank by total estimated cost. The lowest total wins rank 1. No exceptions, no sponsored placements, no affiliate weighting.

How "total estimated cost" is computed

Total = unit price × quantity + estimated shipping + estimated tax (excluded by default). Unit price is whatever the dealer publishes for the requested payment method; if a dealer doesn't list that method, we walk a documented fallback chain (wire → ACH → check → cash → listed → card) and mark the offer as a fallback.

Shipping is free over the dealer's published free-shipping threshold; otherwise we use the dealer's flat rate when documented, or a conservative configured default ($9.95) with reduced confidence.

How premium is computed

melt_value = spot × pure_metal_weight × quantity
premium_dollars = total_estimated − melt_value
premium_percent = premium_dollars / melt_value × 100

The premium reflects everything you actually pay over the metal's spot value, including shipping. A small-quantity order is therefore dominated by shipping and looks worse than a tube or monster-box order of the same product.

Freshness and exclusion

Every offer carries an observed-at timestamp. Tiers:

• Fresh: ≤30 minutes old
• Recent: 30–60 minutes old (still ranked by default)
• Stale: >60 minutes old (excluded from the default ranking)
• Very stale: >24 hours old (always excluded)

Out-of-stock offers are excluded from the default ranking. Offers below a composite confidence score of 60/100 are excluded as well — confidence weights parser certainty, mapping certainty, freshness, shipping policy clarity, spot-feed health, and dealer crawl health.

Tie-breakers

When two offers come within a cent or two of each other on total cost, we prefer the offer with (in order) higher confidence, fresher data, and higher dealer reputation tier. We never tie-break on commercial relationship.

What we don't do

• Sell bullion or take custody of metal or funds
• Take payment for ranking position
• Hide dealers based on affiliate relationships
• Quote a state-by-state sales tax (excluded by default; a state selector will land later)

Final word

Prices change constantly. The dealer's own checkout is the final word on price and terms. Verify the cart total before completing any purchase.