Gold bar 20 g or Gold bar 1 oz: which is the better buy today?
Gold bar 20 g and Gold bar 1 oz are the same object at two sizes — 999.9 gold from an LBMA refinery, with the weight on the stamp — and Gold bar 1 oz holds 1.56 times the gold of Gold bar 20 g: 31.10 g against 20.00 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 20 g | Gold bar 1 oz |
|---|---|---|
| fine gold | 20.00 g | 31.10 g |
| gross weight | 20.00 g | 31.10 g |
| purity | 999.9 ‰ · 24 kt | 999.9 ‰ · 24 kt |
| length × width | 31.3 × 18.3 mm | 41.1 × 24.1 mm |
| thickness | 1.80 mm | 1.63 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 20 g — Twenty grams, two thirds of an ounce, and a premium already close to the ounce coins’: the metal has taken over the price.
Gold bar 1 oz — The troy ounce as a bar: the same gold as a Krugerrand or a Maple Leaf, cast or minted by a refinery rather than struck by a mint, and usually a little cheaper over the metal for it.
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 20.00 g the small one carries far more of it per gram than the big one does over 31.10 g — which is why Gold bar 20 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.