Gold Bars: A Complete Guide to Sizes, Brands, and Premiums

Gold bars are the most direct way to own investment-grade gold. Unlike coins, which carry a legal-tender face value and a mint’s design premium, a bar is priced almost entirely on the weight and purity stamped on its face. That simplicity is why bars dominate the wholesale market and why retail investors buying above a few thousand dollars almost always end up holding at least some bars.

This guide covers what you actually need to know before buying: the standard sizes, how cast and minted bars differ, which refiners the wholesale market recognizes, the premium ladder from a 1 gram bar to a 400 ounce Good Delivery bar, and how bars behave at resale and inside a self-directed IRA.

What Counts as an Investment Gold Bar

An investment gold bar is a rectangular ingot of refined gold, produced by a recognized refinery, whose weight and purity are stamped on the face and documented on an accompanying assay card. It has no monetary face value. Its price is a direct function of three inputs: the spot price of gold on the day of purchase, the weight in troy ounces or grams, and the premium the dealer charges to cover fabrication, distribution, and margin.

Two attributes separate investment bars from generic gold products. First, fineness: modern investment bars are refined to at least 0.995 (99.5% pure gold), with most contemporary retail bars at 0.9999 (four nines fine). Second, provenance: the bar must be traceable to an accredited refinery through a serial number, hallmark, and assay certificate. Both attributes together are what allow a bar to change hands at market price without a fresh assay each time.

Standard Sizes: 1 Gram to 400 Ounces

The wholesale gold market has settled on a fairly narrow set of standard bar sizes. Every recognized refiner produces most or all of the sizes below, which is why the same weight from different refiners trades at nearly the same price. Silver uses the same standard weight breaks; silver bar sizes maps the full range from 1 oz to 1,000 oz.

The 400 troy ounce Good Delivery bar is not a fixed-weight product. LBMA rules specify a gold content between 350 and 430 troy ounces per bar, with each bar’s actual weight recorded to three decimal places. That single format underpins the London over-the-counter gold market and the reserves of most central banks. The full specifications are published in the current edition of the LBMA Good Delivery Rules at lbma.org.uk.

For a size-by-size cost and use-case breakdown, see the companion guide on gold bar sizes from 1 gram to 400 ounces.

Cast vs Minted: How Bars Are Made

Every gold bar starts as refined bullion, then follows one of two production routes.

Cast bars are poured molten into a mold, cooled, stamped with weight, purity, refiner logo, and serial number, and shipped. The finish is dull, slightly uneven, and often shows minor surface texture from the mold. Cast production is fast and low-cost, which is why almost every bar above 10 troy ounces is cast. Large cast bars are what depositories store and what the wholesale market moves.

Minted bars begin as a continuously cast strip that is rolled to precise thickness, cut to size, and struck with a die under high pressure. The result is a bar with sharp edges, a mirror-polished surface, often a decorative back-side design, and a serial number pressed with the die. Minted bars usually ship in tamper-evident sealed packaging that carries the assay card. This format dominates the fractional-size market (1 gram up to 100 grams) because presentation matters more to buyers at those sizes and because sealed packaging protects the bar from handling damage.

Neither format is a purer product than the other. A .9999 cast bar and a .9999 minted bar contain the same gold. The difference is in cost of production (minted is higher), presentation (minted is cleaner), and typical use case (large sizes go cast, small sizes go minted).

Assay Cards and Serial Numbers

The assay card is the primary document that ties a specific bar to its refinery. It records the bar’s stated fineness, exact weight, serial number, refiner name, and date of assay. On minted bars from major refiners, the card is heat-sealed into a tamper-evident blister pack with the bar itself. Breaking the seal separates the bar from its direct chain of custody and typically triggers a re-assay or price discount when the bar is later resold.

Some refiners now layer digital verification on top of the physical card. PAMP Suisse’s Veriscan technology reads the bar’s surface topography and matches it against the refinery’s database. Argor-Heraeus, Valcambi, and Perth Mint publish online serial-number lookup pages that let a buyer confirm a bar’s authenticity before purchase. Any of these tools is a useful cross-check, but the sealed card remains the market-standard authentication.

For the full mechanics of how assay documentation is issued and why the sealed package matters at resale, see the explainer on what an assay card certifies on a gold bar.

Recognized Refiners: The LBMA Good Delivery List

The London Bullion Market Association publishes and maintains the Good Delivery List, the definitive registry of refiners whose bars are accepted at face value in international wholesale trade. To achieve Good Delivery status, a refinery must submit sample bars to independent probing, meet strict physical and purity specifications, maintain minimum production tonnages, and pass periodic re-approvals. The current list is public at lbma.org.uk.

The table below lists the refiners whose bars most commonly reach the North American retail and IRA markets. All are LBMA-accredited unless noted. Heraeus is a common IRA pick among European refiners; Heraeus gold bars in a Gold IRA details their eligibility.

Older bars from previously listed refiners (Johnson Matthey, Engelhard, Credit Suisse, Republic Metals) still trade on the secondary market and remain IRA-eligible if they meet the fineness rule, though liquidity and premium behavior vary by refiner and vintage. Legacy Credit Suisse bars, in particular, continue to change hands after the UBS acquisition of Credit Suisse; see the note on Credit Suisse bars after the UBS merger for the current status.

The Premium Ladder: What You Pay Over Spot

Premium is the amount a bar sells for above the current spot price of its gold content. It reflects fabrication cost, dealer margin, packaging, and distribution. Premium is not fixed. It moves with dealer inventory, retail demand, and the size of the order. The pattern below is the typical shape of the retail premium ladder in a normal market. In a supply squeeze (2020, 2022), fractional-size premiums can double or triple while large-bar premiums move much less.

The take-away is straightforward: paying premium is the cost of small denominations. A 1 gram bar at 25% premium loses a full quarter of its purchase value on day one relative to spot. That does not make small bars a bad choice for gift-giving or micro-diversification, but investors optimizing for total ounces held per dollar spent should concentrate purchases around 1 ounce, 10 ounce, or 1 kilogram formats. For the mechanics of why fractional premiums spike in crises, see the explainer on why bullion premiums spike in crises.

How to Authenticate a Gold Bar

Counterfeit gold bars exist and have surfaced periodically in the retail market, most notoriously the tungsten-core bars that mimic gold’s density. Straightforward buying discipline stops nearly all fraud at the door.

• Buy from established dealers. Long-track-record dealers source directly from LBMA-accredited refiners and stand behind authenticity. Deep-discount online sellers and social media offers are the vector for most retail fraud.
• Keep bars sealed. An intact tamper-evident package from PAMP, Valcambi, Argor-Heraeus, Perth Mint, or Royal Canadian Mint is the single strongest presumption of authenticity. Do not break the seal until you are ready to sell or take physical delivery outside a controlled environment.
• Verify serial numbers online where possible. PAMP, Valcambi, Argor-Heraeus, and Perth Mint each maintain a public lookup for bar serial numbers.
• Test physical specifications. Every reputable size has a documented length, width, and thickness. Any bar that fails a caliper check against the refiner’s published dimensions is suspect. Density testing (specific gravity) rules out most tungsten-core fakes; ultrasound and XRF are the next level of verification.

Loose secondary-market bars and older bars where the seal has been broken carry more authentication risk. A local coin shop can send suspect bars to an independent assay lab for confirmation. For a deeper look at the detection tools and famous counterfeit cases, see the reference on tungsten fake gold bars and how to detect them.

Resale Liquidity by Size

Not every gold bar sells the same way when you go to close a position. Liquidity, in the gold bar context, means how quickly a specific size can be sold at a price close to spot without a discount or a delay.

1 oz, 10 oz, and 1 kilogram bars from any recognized refiner sell within a day at any bullion dealer in the country. These are the workhorses of the retail bar market. Dealers keep constant bid quotes on them.

Fractional bars (1 g to 20 g) also sell quickly, but the buy-side spread is wider. A dealer might pay 3% to 6% below spot for fractionals versus 0.5% to 2% below spot for 1 oz bars.

100 oz and larger bars require a wholesale-tier buyer. A local coin shop rarely buys a 100 oz bar outright. The sale is typically routed to a wholesaler or refinery, which lengthens the settlement window from same-day to several business days.

400 oz Good Delivery bars are effectively institutional-only. Individual investors who acquire one usually work through a dealer that can broker the bar to an LBMA vault. This is not a bar for a retirement account.

Older or off-brand bars, or bars that have been out of sealed packaging for years, can face additional resale friction. Dealers may require a re-assay before quoting a firm buy price. Serial number, refiner reputation, and sealed status together determine whether a bar prices at full market or at a discount.

Storage Options

Once a bar is in hand, three storage paths are common. Each has different costs and different insurance profiles.

Home storage in a rated safe is the lowest ongoing cost. It also carries the highest risk: theft, fire, and standard homeowners insurance policy limits on precious metals (often $250 to $2,500 per policy) mean a serious position needs a separately scheduled rider. Home storage of any bar over a few thousand dollars in value warrants a UL-rated safe bolted to the structure and a specific insurance endorsement.

Bank safe deposit boxes are middle-ground: physical security is high, cost is modest ($50 to $200 per year), but bank contents are not covered by FDIC insurance and access is limited to bank hours. Some large investors use safe deposit boxes for smaller position increments and depositories for the bulk.

Private allocated depository storage is the default for larger holdings and mandatory for gold held inside an IRA. Allocated storage means specific serial-numbered bars are recorded as belonging to the account holder, stored separately from the depository’s other holdings, and insured under the depository’s all-risk policy (typically underwritten by Lloyd’s of London). Annual fees run 0.5% to 1% of holdings value for retail accounts. Major North American depositories include Delaware Depository, Brink’s Global Services, IDS of Delaware, and Texas Precious Metals Depository.

Gold Bars in a Self-Directed IRA

The Internal Revenue Code allows gold bars inside an IRA under a specific fineness and refiner rule. IRC Section 408(m)(3) requires that the bar be at least 0.995 fine (0.999 for platinum and palladium) and either be produced by a refiner accredited by NYMEX, COMEX, NYSE/Liffe, LME, LBMA, LPPM, or TOCOM, be produced by a national government mint, or otherwise meet ISO 9000 quality standards. The full statutory text is on the Cornell Legal Information Institute page for IRC Section 408.

In practice, this means that most modern bars from any refiner on the LBMA Good Delivery List qualify. Older Johnson Matthey, Engelhard, and Credit Suisse bars remain eligible on the same fineness-plus-accreditation grounds. The IRS does not certify individual bars; the custodian and depository verify eligibility on intake.

Two operational constraints separate IRA bars from bars held personally. First, the account holder cannot take physical possession while the bar remains in the IRA. Doing so would be treated as a taxable distribution under Section 408(m). Second, the bar must ship directly from the dealer to an IRS-approved depository. It never passes through the investor’s hands.

For the full mechanics of holding physical bars in a retirement account, see the reference on physical gold IRAs for bullion investors and the current IRS-approved gold coins and bars list.