Maple Leaf 1/4 oz or American Eagle 1/4 oz: which is the better buy today?
Maple Leaf 1/4 oz and American Eagle 1/4 oz hold the same gold — 7.78 g of fine metal each — and differ in everything else: Maple Leaf 1/4 oz is struck in 999.9 ‰ · 24 kt by Royal Canadian Mint, American Eagle 1/4 oz in 916.7 ‰ · 22 kt by United States Mint. With the metal identical, the only thing left to compare is what each dealer charges above it.
| coin | Maple Leaf 1/4 oz | American Eagle 1/4 oz |
|---|---|---|
| fine gold | 7.78 g | 7.78 g |
| gross weight | 7.78 g | 8.48 g |
| purity | 999.9 ‰ · 24 kt | 916.7 ‰ · 22 kt |
| diameter | 20 mm | 22 mm |
| thickness | 1.78 mm | 1.83 mm |
| face value | 10 dollars | 10 dollars |
| struck | Canada · since 1982 | United States · since 1986 |
The prices come from the feed, and the feed has not answered yet.
Maple Leaf 1/4 oz — The quarter ounce, 20 mm of 999.9 gold with the ten-dollar face value — the size the Mint added first, in 1982, when the ounce turned out to be too big a bite for many buyers.
American Eagle 1/4 oz — The quarter-ounce Eagle: 22 mm, ten dollars on its face, Saint-Gaudens’ Liberty on the obverse like every size of the family.
American Eagle 1/4 oz is 916.7 ‰ · 22 kt, so it weighs 8.48 g for its 7.78 g of gold; Maple Leaf 1/4 oz is 999.9 ‰ · 24 kt, 7.78 g on the scale. Neither holds more gold for the difference: the alloy is hardness, which is why American Eagle 1/4 oz can be handled and Maple Leaf 1/4 oz travels in a capsule.
Both are modern bullion coins, struck for investors — Maple Leaf 1/4 oz since 1982, American Eagle 1/4 oz since 1986 — and priced on their metal and the margins above it.
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.