Welcome to Finnegans precious metals blog. Disclaimer: Finnegan is a two year old West Highland White Terrier. He does not offer investment advice. Check back regularly for a behind the counter look into the precious metals and coin industry.

This weeks topic relates to a question we have been getting a lot over the last several months. Spot prices! Where do we get ours and why are they often different from one company to the next? First, Ill dispel a myth. We do not have a button we can push that bumps the spot price up or down while you are at the counter. Now on to the heart of the matter. Usually, our spot price is drawn from KITCO which is a Montreal based precious metals company. If you aren't familiar with KITCO I recommend you check them out. They publish great articles relating to precious metals, crypto, and economics. Like any precious metals company that buys and sells from the public you should take anything they say with a grain of salt as they have a dog in the fight, but I have never found them to be egregiously biased or predatory. As most of you know, the spot prices are representative of the prices at which gold, silver, platinum, etc. contracts are being traded at on the commodities markets. Many of you also know that there are different contracts set to expire at different times throughout the year. Each of these contracts can and probably will have a different price depending on how people anticipate the precious metals market will progress. Anyone of these contracts could be called spot and while one could argue that the current months contract is the most relevant to transactions at a coin shop, there are legitimate reasons why a future months contract might be used. Recently the word backwardation entered the lexicon for many of us. In general backwardation is when an asset, in this case precious metals are trading at a higher rate than their associated futures contract. When markets get as volatile, and dare I say illogical as they have been in the first couple months of 2026 a disconnect can develop between those buying, selling, shipping, insuring, mining, refining, and storing physical precious metals and those buying and selling 1s and 0s on their computers. So, while we typically draw our spot price from KITCO at times we find it necessary to use the spot price posted by one of the larger wholesale entities so that we aren't buying and selling based on prices completely divorced from the real world. Take from this what you will, but I think its important to not get hung up on spot price as anyone can display any number they want and call it spot. For that reason, premiums above or below spot can also be misleading. In the end, total price out the door is what matters so just make sure you compare apples to apples.