Gold bar 100 g or Gold bar 250 g: which is the better buy today?
Gold bar 100 g and Gold bar 250 g are the same object at two sizes — 999.9 gold from an LBMA refinery, with the weight on the stamp — and Gold bar 250 g holds 2.50 times the gold of Gold bar 100 g: 250.00 g against 100.00 g. The metal costs the same per gram in both; what differs is how much of the price is the making rather than the gold, and the small one always carries more of it.
| coin | Gold bar 100 g | Gold bar 250 g |
|---|---|---|
| fine gold | 100.00 g | 250.00 g |
| gross weight | 100.00 g | 250.00 g |
| purity | 999.9 ‰ · 24 kt | 999.9 ‰ · 24 kt |
| length × width | 48.5 × 28.5 mm | 70 × 40 mm |
| thickness | 3.75 mm | 4.65 mm |
| face value | none — a bar is not money | none — a bar is not money |
| struck | LBMA Good Delivery | LBMA Good Delivery |
The prices come from the feed, and the feed has not answered yet.
Gold bar 100 g — The hundred grams: the bar the European market trades most, three ounces and a bit, at a premium of a few per cent — the first size where a bar is the cheap way to hold gold.
Gold bar 250 g — A quarter kilo, eight ounces: sold cast as often as minted, and a sum of money rather than a piece to hand over a counter.
Both are 999.9 fine gold, cast or minted by a refinery on the LBMA Good Delivery list — PAMP, Valcambi, Argor-Heraeus, Heraeus, Metalor — and stamped with their weight and a serial: the same object at two sizes, and nothing between them but the number on the stamp.
What decides between them is not the gold, which costs the same per gram in both, but what is paid per bar: the minting or the casting, the assay card, the shop’s margin. Spread over 100.00 g the small one carries far more of it per gram than the big one does over 250.00 g — which is why Gold bar 100 g is nearly always the dearer gold, and why it is bought anyway: it sells in smaller pieces, in one go.
So the comparison is the premium. Whichever of the two a dealer asks less for above its metal is the cheaper gold that day — and that changes shop by shop and day by day, which is what the numbers above are for.