Where to Buy Gold & Silver: Trusted Dealers & How to Avoid Scams

Jordan Bell

Founder and editor-in-chief; 15+ years following metals markets, with a background in financial writing.

Published Jun 2026 · Last reviewed Jun 18, 2026

This is the front door to where you actually buy gold and silver — and how to do it without getting fleeced. We don’t sell metal and we take no dealer commissions, so this isn’t a funnel disguised as advice. Think of it as a Wirecutter-style guide, but honest about the parts a paid review would skip: the round-trip premium, the upsell traps, and the dealers we’d tell our own family to avoid.

Where you can actually buy gold and silver

There’s no single “right” place to buy. There are channels, each with a different trade-off between price, convenience, privacy, and risk. The mistake most beginners make is paying a premium for convenience they didn’t need — or worse, paying a scammer’s premium for a story. Here’s the honest landscape.

Online bullion dealers are where most serious buyers land, because volume and competition push premiums down. Local coin shops earn their place when you want metal in hand today, value privacy, or are buying a few junk-silver coins not worth shipping — we compare the two head-to-head in online vs. local coin shop. Mints (the US Mint, Royal Canadian Mint, Perth Mint) sell genuine product but rarely at retail’s best price. Costco is a real option for members who’ll bank the credit-card and membership rewards against the premium — just know there’s no buy-back, covered in buying gold at Costco. And ETFs are a different animal entirely: paper exposure, no vault, no shipping — see the gold ETF comparison if you want the price without the metal.

The one skill that matters most: vetting a dealer

If you learn nothing else from this hub, learn how to vet a dealer. Most “scams” in this space aren’t fake gold — the metal is usually real. The damage is done through pricing, pressure, and policies you didn’t read. A reputable seller passes a short, concrete checklist:

• Years in business. A long, traceable track record beats a slick new site every time.
• A real street address and phone. You should be able to find where they physically are.
• Transparent, all-in pricing. Premium over spot stated clearly, with payment-method costs and shipping disclosed before checkout.
• A published buy-back policy. An honest dealer tells you, in writing, how they’ll buy your metal back.
• Secure, insured shipping and sensible payment options — not gift cards or wire-only-or-the-deal-dies pressure.

That’s the short version. The full methodology — how to read a premium, how to spot a fake buy-back promise, what a reputation check actually proves — lives in how to vet a dealer. It’s the most important page in this pillar, and the one we’d point a nervous first-time buyer to before any “best dealer” list.

The round-trip premium: the cost nobody advertises

Before you compare dealers, understand the cost structure that applies to all of them. You buy bullion above the spot price (the dealer’s premium) and you sell it below spot (the buy-back spread). That gap is the round-trip cost of owning physical metal, and it’s the single biggest reason short-term flipping rarely works.

As a rough guide: gold coins typically carry a 3–8% premium over spot, silver runs 5–15%, and bars usually sit lower than coins of the same metal. The channel you choose moves that number — which is exactly what the chart above illustrates. The full mechanics, and how to compare quotes apples-to-apples, are in premiums over spot. The takeaway: a “low price” means nothing until you also know the buy-back spread, because that’s what you actually get back when you sell.

Red flags and outright scams

The patterns repeat. Once you can name them, most of the danger evaporates. These are the warning signs that should slow you down or stop you cold.

Two of these deserve a closer look. First, the high-pressure “rare coin” pitch — often arriving by TV ad or unsolicited call — typically steers buyers from low-premium bullion into numismatic or “proof” coins carrying markups that can run several times higher. The metal is real; the spread is the trap. We treat US Money Reserve as a cautionary example in its review, and the same pattern shows up in gold-IRA sales, which is why our best gold IRA companies page leans hard on disclosure.

Second, open marketplaces. Amazon and eBay are built for general commerce, not bullion authentication, so counterfeit bars and coins do appear and buyer protection is uneven. Buy from established bullion dealers instead — the full case is in buying gold on Amazon & eBay. And because counterfeits exist regardless of channel, especially on popular bars and coins, keep assay cards sealed and learn the ping, magnet, dimension, and Fisch tests in authenticating gold and our guide to avoiding counterfeit gold.

Comparing the mainstream dealers — without a fake leaderboard

We don’t publish a ranked “#1 best dealer” list, because we haven’t placed test orders with each one and a leaderboard would imply we did. What we can do is lay out the established, mainstream dealers on transparent, public-information criteria — when they were founded, their specialty, and what they’re generally known for — so you can match a dealer to your situation.

The right move is to price the exact coin or bar you want across two or three of these on the same day, premium included, then check each one’s buy-back spread. Our deeper comparisons live in best online gold dealers and best online silver dealers, and each dealer has its own balanced write-up — pros, cons, and who should skip it — at APMEX, JM Bullion, Money Metals Exchange, SD Bullion, BGASC, and Silver Gold Bull. For the member-only route, see the Costco precious metals review; and because gold-IRA selling is its own world, Augusta Precious Metals (high-touch, IRA-focused, higher minimum) gets a separate look from the cautionary US Money Reserve review.

Which products, and how the transaction works

What you buy matters as much as where. For bars, stick to LBMA Good Delivery / accredited refiners — PAMP Suisse, Valcambi, Argor-Heraeus, the Royal Canadian Mint, the Perth Mint — whose assay-carded bars are widely recognized and easier to resell. Off-brand bars can be perfectly real and still harder to sell. The recognized names are catalogued in gold bar brands. For the broader product decision — coins versus bars, sizes, fractional — start from buying gold or buying silver.

Then there’s the transaction itself, where small choices change your cost and your safety. On payment: a bank wire is usually the cheapest option but is irreversible; ACH or check is cheap but funds may hold for a few days; a credit card is convenient but typically adds about 3–4% and is often capped — details in payment methods. On shipping: insist on discreet, fully insured, signature-required delivery, and inspect the package the moment it arrives so you can report any problem fast — see shipping & insurance.

A note on reporting — it’s not a tax

One last thing the scary ads distort. Dealers must file Form 8300 when you pay more than $10,000 in cash, and certain dealer buy-backs trigger a 1099-B. Neither is a tax, and “no 1099” does not mean a sale is tax-free — gains on physical metal are still taxable, generally at the collectibles rate up to 28%. Anyone marketing a way to “buy gold with no reporting” is usually selling overpriced coins on a technicality. The straight story is in gold & silver taxes.

Where to go next

If you’re choosing a place to buy, start with vetting; if you’re comparing sellers, start with the dealer guides; if you want paper instead of metal, start with the ETF comparison.

Frequently asked questions