Maple Leaf 1 oz or Panda 30 g: which is the better buy today?
Maple Leaf 1 oz holds 31.10 g of fine gold and Panda 30 g 30.00 g — close enough to be the same purchase in metal, and far enough apart in everything else not to be the same coin to own.
| coin | Maple Leaf 1 oz | Panda 30 g |
|---|---|---|
| fine gold | 31.10 g | 30.00 g |
| gross weight | 31.10 g | 30.00 g |
| purity | 999.9 ‰ · 24 kt | 999 ‰ · 24 kt |
| diameter | 30 mm | 32 mm |
| thickness | 2.87 mm | 2.00 mm |
| face value | 50 dollars | 500 yuan |
| struck | Canada · since 1979 | China · since 2016 |
The prices come from the feed, and the feed has not answered yet.
Maple Leaf 1 oz — Pure gold, no alloy: the softest of the one-ounce coins and the one that shows a fingerprint, so it travels in its capsule.
Panda 30 g — Metric rather than imperial — 30 g, not an ounce — and the only one of these whose design changes every year.
Panda 30 g is 999 ‰ · 24 kt, so it weighs 30.00 g for its 30.00 g of gold; Maple Leaf 1 oz is 999.9 ‰ · 24 kt, 31.10 g on the scale. Neither holds more gold for the difference: the alloy is hardness, which is why Panda 30 g can be handled and Maple Leaf 1 oz travels in a capsule.
Both are modern bullion coins, struck for investors — Maple Leaf 1 oz since 1979, Panda 30 g since 2016 — 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.