Why are silver coins cheaper than bars?

just stamp "half a penny" on the bars, then the price would be cheaper than coins.
 
TreasureHunter said:
That still doesn't explain why coins are much cheaper per ounce than bars.

Other European merchants... similar situation:
www.amsterdamgold.com is another merchant, in the Netherlands.
www.suissegold.com is from Switzerland (non EU country, so no "special silver tax" is added, as I know...), but most of their bars are way above coin prices as well (there are very few, especially their own bars that cost close to coin prices)

Regardless of EU regulations, laws and high premiums, all this still doesn't explain why they have such immense prices for bar, but not that high for coins.

This is typical to Europe, UK. High prices on bars. What makes bars so expensive? I do not know!
I could enumerate a ton of EU sellers

To me it's a mystery... Australia, Asia, some US merchans too... are quite even in case of bars and coins - similar prices per ounce.
Click to expand...
The explanation is given there at amsterdamgold.com (and other dealers sites) though.

- For nonfabricated silver, alike bars, it's the full tax rate of Netherland: 21% so the dealer has to add it to the invoice as a 21% tax item, above his profit, explaining the very high spread (see below)
So that 21% tax is always there on this kind of silver, only that if you're buying the silver as a business for your business purposes, you can subtract the tax later on from your tax bill (that's always the case for businesses)
- For fabricated silver, alike coins and bars with a design / face value, the dealer can (he doesn't have to) chose a tax agreement named 'margin', wherein the dealer himself has to pay a reduced tax rate of 6% + eventual import duties when his supplies is foreign, and wherein only tax on shipping appears on the invoice, so the dealers profit AND the tax(+import duties) is included in the product price on the invoice, there is no separate tax item for the silver on the invoice, only for the shipping. The dealer pays tax on his profits too ofcourse.
https://www.inkoopedelmetaal.nl/nl/
At the moment,
- the spot price is 15,02 per ounce which is 483 per kilo
- a Umicore 1 kg bar costs 646 which is spot price + 33,7% bought back by the dealer (set at 98% of spot) for 473 so spread is 173 per kilo (with a 21% tax component)
- a Maple Leaf 1 ouncer costs 19,40 which is spot price + 29,2% bought back by the dealer (set at 107% of spot) for 16,05 so spread is 107,7 per kilo
- a Kookaburra / Lunar / Koala 1 kg coin costs 615,00 which is spot price + 27,4% bought back by the dealer for 511,50 so spread is 103,5 per kilo (with a 6% tax component)
So the spread on the kg bar is 67% bigger than the spread on kg coin.

And that's why silver bars are so expensive, when you buy them as a nonbusiness, the spread on silver is worldwide seen already big as a rule - volatile price due to a big part of the demand caused by people that never intended to keep it for a longer time - so dealers take this into account and hedge themselves along a high spread, and on top of that, 21% tax.
While the coins/coinbars are just 6% tax on top of the spread, but the sell price is still higher than the spread suggests, due to the dealers chosing to divide the spread over selling and buying back (hence the 107% of spot setpoint).
 
I hope Australian Gov't doesn't whack a tax on PM's (bars).

They targeted Tobacco and Banking, what else is fair game?
A bigger deficit (propping up the post-GFC economy) means something else will be a 'tax target'...
 
Wha? Where are you finding bars more expensive than coins? In the US it's the opposite, bars are the cheapest way to buy with rounds almost always more pricey because a perfectly round object takes more precision to manufacture than a square object.
 
I find bars more expensive in some places, some countries.

The US and Australia have the best prices on bars.

The highest prices on everything are in the UK.

Continental Europe is full of high premiums and high VAT's and other taxes added on top of all silver products, but Estonia is most probably the cheapest - no VAT!

Some bars are traditionally "too expensive", especially some notorious brand items like Johnson Matthey, Pamp and Valcambi.
 
I live in the US...prices in USD
Provident Metals
Cheapest generic round 17.30 1.46 over spot
cheapest generic bar 17.95 2.11 " "

cheapest 10 oz. bar 16.97/oz. 1.13 " "

cheapest 5 oz. bar 17.85/oz. 2.01 " "

Coins running between $19-21 $4+ " "
 
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