coin guide

How and Where to Buy Silver Bars

Where to buy silver bars comes down to three channels: online precious metals marketplaces, local coin shops and, in some cases, the mint that makes the bar. All three price it the same way, at the spot price of silver per troy ounce (31.1035 grams) plus a premium. Compare offers by cost per troy ounce, check what the bar would sell for, and weigh it when it arrives: a 1 oz bar should read 31.10 grams and a 10 oz bar 311.03.

Where Silver Bars Are Sold

Not every mint sells bars to the public. The Royal Canadian Mint says its bullion coins and bars are available to purchase "through select dealers", so a 10 oz Royal Canadian Mint bar reaches you through an online seller or a shop.

Private sales and peer-to-peer listings sit outside all three, with nobody standing behind the bar. The Anti-Counterfeiting Educational Foundation (ACEF) says a price significantly below the market price of the metal probably means a fake.

How to Vet a Seller Before You Pay

Retail metal sellers aren't regulated at the federal level, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) warns, so the checking falls to you. The CFTC tells buyers to ask their state attorney general or securities regulator about a seller's complaint history. For an online seller, the CFTC also says to verify the physical address and how long the business has been operating.

Add two tests from ACEF, which favors sellers that guarantee their products are genuine and will purchase them when you're ready to sell.

How the Price of a Silver Bar Is Built

Every bar's price starts from spot. The CFTC describes the spot price as the cash price for immediate delivery of physical metal, quoted in dollars per troy ounce. You can follow it on our live silver price charts.

A troy ounce isn't the ounce on a kitchen scale. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) puts it at 31.1035 grams, or 1.097 everyday ounces, about 9.7% heavier, and a kilo bar holds 32.15 of them, not 32. NIST also treats an ounce with no label as the everyday kind, so a bullion listing should say troy.

The premium is what you pay above spot. The Royal Mint's glossary defines it as the additional cost above the spot price, covering minting, distribution and the seller's margin.

To compare two offers, follow the CFTC's advice and compare the actual weight and the price. Add shipping to the price, divide by the bar's troy ounces and subtract spot. What's left is the premium per ounce. Run both offers at the same moment: spot keeps moving.

Which Bar Sizes and Formats Carry Lower Premiums

The Royal Mint explains that larger products are generally easier to produce and cheaper per ounce than smaller ones. So the premium per ounce tends to step down from 1 oz silver bars to 10 oz silver bars to 100 oz silver bars. The cost of going big is that a 100 oz bar sells whole, while the same silver in 10 oz bars can be sold a few at a time.

Format matters too. A cast bar, also called a poured bar, is molten silver cooled in a mold, and The Royal Mint notes it usually carries a lower premium than a minted bar, which is cut from rolled sheet and stamped. Asahi lists its minted 10 oz bar at 90 mm long and 7.4 mm thick, while The Perth Mint's cast 10 oz bar runs no more than 63 mm long and up to 16 mm thick.

What a Brand Name Does and Doesn't Tell You

There's no fixed lowest-premium brand to name, because premiums move with the market, and a bar's size and format shape them along with the name on its stamp. To find the lower-premium maker on a given day, hold size and format constant (10 oz cast bars from The Perth Mint and Valcambi, say) and compare cost per troy ounce.

What a maker's name does give you is a specification to test against: ACEF points out that bar makers publish the specifications of their products, most often on their own websites. The Perth Mint's page for its 1 oz minted silver bar lists 47.60 mm by 27.60 mm, a maximum thickness of 3.57 mm and a minimum gross weight of 31.107 g. We checked every dimension in this guide against the maker's own page, and every weight against NIST's conversion factors.

"LBMA" on a small bar's listing describes the refiner, not the bar. Asahi Refining calls itself an LBMA Good Delivery refiner on the page for its 100 oz silver bar. But the London Bullion Market Association's Good Delivery Lists cover only the wholesale bar of approximately 1,000 troy ounces, and the LBMA states that no other silver products from accredited refiners fall within them. A 100 oz Asahi bar comes from an accredited refiner. It isn't a Good Delivery bar.

Check the Sell Price Before You Buy

The premium is what you pay over spot going in. The spread is what the round trip costs. The Royal Mint defines it as the difference between the buy price and sell price of bullion. The CFTC is blunt about who sets it: a seller will always sell metal above the spot price and buy it below spot, and each seller sets its own spread.

In fraud cases the CFTC has seen spreads of more than 300%, so before you pay, ask any seller what it would pay you today for the same bar.

On our marketplace you don't have to ask: we run a two-way market, so each product page shows a bid beside the ask. Our minimum selling transaction is $1,000. Bullion Standard Pro, our paid membership, gives members live, executable wholesale bid and ask pricing.

Payment Methods and the Cash Reporting Rule

We give a 4% discount for payment by bank wire, paper check or eCheck through Plaid, though eChecks and paper checks take several business days to clear before an order ships. We also accept Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, PayPal and cryptocurrency through BitPay. The price locks when you place the order, and a confirmed order can't be canceled or changed.

Cash has its own rule, unrelated to silver. A business that receives more than $10,000 in cash in one transaction or in related transactions must file IRS Form 8300. For this rule, cash can include cashier's checks, bank drafts, traveler's checks and money orders with a face value of $10,000 or less in certain transactions. Form 8300 is a report by the business. It isn't a tax on you.

How to Check a Silver Bar Is Genuine When It Arrives

Run four checks in order, with a digital scale and a caliper. Weight and measured size together are what ACEF calls the most cost-effective and reliable way to catch most fake silver.

Start with the stamp. A bullion bar states its weight in troy ounces or grams, its fineness (.999 or .9999) and its maker. The Perth Mint says the stamp on its kilo bar now reads "1 KILO FINE SILVER 9999". A stamp that gives the weight only as "ounces," or leaves out the fineness, deserves a closer look.

Then weigh the bar in grams. At NIST's 31.1035 grams to the troy ounce, a 1 oz bar should read 31.10 g, a 10 oz bar 311.03 g and a 100 oz bar 3,110.35 g. Switch a kitchen scale to ounces and that 10 oz bar reads 10.97 (10 times 1.097), because the scale counts everyday ounces. The weight should match the maker's stated figure, ACEF advises.

Next, measure length, width and thickness against the maker's published dimensions. Thickness matters most: a core of lighter metal can match a bar's weight only by taking up more room. The Numismatic Guaranty Company (NGC) found that in a fake 1 oz silver coin it analyzed in 2023, which was 65% copper, 21% zinc and 13.5% nickel and much too thick.

A magnet comes last and can only rule a bar out. A bar that sticks to one isn't silver. But current fakes, ACEF reports, use cores of lead, titanium, copper or brass under a thin silver plating, and a magnet doesn't attract those either.

If any reading is off, have the bar checked by a professional or with an electronic verifier, one of the metal testers in our catalog. Sigma Metalytics, which makes one, says every aspect of a genuine sample falls within a very small tolerance of the published specification.

Storage and IRA Rules for Silver Bars

A home safe, a bank box and a third-party depository are the usual places to keep bars, and the CFTC counts storage and insurance among the costs of owning physical metal. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) states that a safe deposit box's contents aren't covered by deposit insurance. Keep bars sealed in their tubes or cards, because Los Alamos National Laboratory notes that silver tarnishes on contact with sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide in the air.

Buying for an IRA changes the rules. IRS Publication 590-A confirms an IRA can invest in certain silver bullion. The tax code, at 26 U.S.C. 408(m), sets two tests: the bullion's fineness must meet the minimum a regulated futures market requires for delivery, and it must be in the physical possession of the IRA trustee. The code names no brands and no refiners, and a bar kept at home isn't IRA metal. Our catalog groups qualifying bars under IRA-eligible silver.

We're not a registered investment advisor and can't give individual investment or tax advice, so speak with a tax professional or financial advisor.

Buying Silver Bars on Our Marketplace

Hold us to the same checks. We've operated since 2010, we're headquartered in San Diego, California, and we hold an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau. Every bar we sell is verified with modern testing equipment, and we guarantee that each item is genuine and contains the weight, fineness and purity advertised. Shipments are fully insured in transit and packed discreetly under recorded video, with a signature required on orders over $250.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it better to buy silver coins or silver bars?

Neither is better outright. Bars typically offer lower premiums than coins, The Royal Mint notes, so more of what you pay goes to metal. Government-minted silver coins such as the American Silver Eagle are legal tender with a face value, and a bar has neither.

Which brand silver bar is best?

No brand is best for every buyer, and we don't rank them. Don't let fineness decide it. The Royal Canadian Mint's 10 oz bar is .9999 fine and Valcambi's 1 oz minted bar is 999.0 fine. That gap is nine ten-thousandths of the bar, under a tenth of 1% of the metal. Our guide to the best silver bars to buy compares the makers.

Does a silver bar need an assay card?

No. An assay card or blister pack is tamper-evident packaging that certifies a bar's weight and purity, and The Royal Mint says it adds assurance but isn't essential for resale. Not every genuine bar comes in one: The Perth Mint sells 1 oz minted bars in tubes of 20. A sealed package doesn't prove a bar either. Coin World reported in 2016 on counterfeit bullion sealed in counterfeit grading holders. Verify the bar, not the card.