One-ounce gold coins: same gold, six different prices

Six coins from six mints, all holding the same thing: 31.1035 grams of fine gold, the troy ounce. The metal inside them is identical, so the only thing left to compare is what each dealer charges above it.

They do not weigh the same, and that is not a contradiction. A Maple Leaf, a Philharmonic, a Britannia and a Kangaroo are struck in 999.9 gold, so the coin weighs the ounce it contains. A Krugerrand and an American Eagle are 22 carat — copper, and silver in the Eagle — so they carry nearly 34 grams on the scale to hold the same ounce of gold. Harder in the hand, and the reason the Krugerrand looks red.

Nor are they the same shape. The Philharmonic spreads its ounce over 37 mm and is 2 mm thick; the Krugerrand puts it into 32.77 mm and nearly 3. Same gold, different object — which matters when it is going into a tube, a capsule or a safe, and not at all to what it is worth.

What moves the premium is availability and demand rather than metal. A mint that strikes to order in a busy year, a coin a country exempts from its own capital gains tax, a design that collectors follow: all of it lands on the price, and none of it lands on the ounce. The premium over spot is the number that makes the six comparable, and it is what the map colours.

So the question this page cannot answer for you is which of the six you want to hold. The one it does answer is what you should pay for it — and the six pages below have that, dealer by dealer, updated every hour.