How the benchmark prices for gold and silver are set, what a troy ounce is, and why the number on the screen is a starting point rather than a checkout price.
It is the most quoted number in precious metals and one of the most misunderstood. The spot price is real, precise, and continuously updated, and almost nobody on earth can actually transact at it. Both halves of that sentence are true, and understanding why is the foundation of metals literacy.
The spot price is the benchmark for immediate delivery of wholesale metal: institutional quantities, exchange-standard bars, professional counterparties. It emerges continuously from the interplay of futures trading on exchanges like COMEX and the over-the-counter market centered in London, where the units of account are 100-ounce contracts and 400-ounce Good Delivery bars, not coins.
Spot assumes away everything retail requires. No fabrication into coins or small bars, no minting, no distribution, no authentication, no insurance, no storage, no shipping to Florida, and no human being answering questions. Every one of those services costs real money, which is why physical products trade above spot on the way in, the anatomy we dissect in Understanding Premiums, and why two-sided markets exist on the way out.
For all its abstraction, spot is the one honest reference everyone shares: the same benchmark for a refinery in Switzerland, a mint in Philadelphia, and a dealer in Boynton Beach. When you call us, the number you hear is anchored to the live benchmark at that minute, which is the entire reason serious dealers price by phone in a market that never sits still. Watch it move yourself on our live charts.
Professionals treat spot as a coordinate, not a promise: the point from which every real-world price is measured. Learn to ask "what is this item’s relationship to spot, and why," and you will understand any quote, from any dealer, in any market, for the rest of your collecting life.