Premium Calculator — What You Are Paying Above the Metal

The premium — the agio, if you have met the older word — is what a dealer charges you above the bare metal value of a coin or bar. That metal value is no mystery: take the spot price, the world market rate per troy ounce, and multiply it by the fine weight the piece actually contains. Everything asked on top of that figure is the premium.

It pays for real work: striking or casting the piece, shipping it, storing it, insuring it, the paperwork behind it — and a living for the dealer. Nobody is fleecing you. The only sensible question is whether the mark-up is ordinary for that product in this market, and that is precisely what the calculator above answers.

Two steps and you have it:

At the Gold price as it stands: a 1 oz coin holds 31.1035 g of fine metal. With spot at 121.58 €/g the metal inside is worth 3,781.63 €. Quoted at 3,951.81 €, that leaves 170.18 € sitting on top — about 4.5 %. The calculator above runs the same sum against the live rate so you do not have to.

One rule explains most of what you will see on Irish dealer sites: the smaller the piece, the fatter the percentage premium. Striking, packing and distributing a coin costs much the same whether it holds a gram or an ounce, so on less metal the same fixed cost weighs far heavier. Rough bands for new gold products — market-dependent, and no dealer named:

This is where it lands. The same money buys different amounts of gold depending on the size you pick. Put €20,000 on the table, and compare a premium of 4.5 % on one full ounce against 12 % on ten tenth-ounces:

At equal fine weight the metal is worth exactly the same, so the choice is about premium and about handling. Bars normally carry the slimmer premium — they are cheaper to produce. Bullion coins ask a little more, but they are recognised the world over, faster to verify and faster to shift: any dealer places a Krugerrand or a Maple Leaf on sight. As investment gold, both forms are free of VAT in Ireland.

One point deserves spelling out, because so much of the bullion writing read in Ireland is produced for a British audience. In Britain the coin-or-bar decision carries a tax consequence: Sovereigns and Britannias are sterling legal tender there and fall outside Capital Gains Tax altogether. That logic stops at the Irish Sea. Revenue charges Capital Gains Tax at a flat 33 % on the gain from a Sovereign exactly as it does on a kilo bar, with the same €1,270 annual exemption and no relief for holding on longer. So in Ireland the question is a practical one and not a tax one: on price alone the bar wins, on ease of resale and on splitting a holding the coin wins, and a modest coin premium is simply the fee for an easier sale later.

The premium is only the first half of the story. What really decides how you do is the spread — the whole gap between what you pay and what you are later offered. Sell back and you will usually be quoted a shade below spot: closest to it for standard bars and household-name coins, further below it for small fractions and anything unusual.

So the true cost of holding physical metal is the full round trip — over spot going in, under spot coming out. That is the real argument for sticking to liquid, standard products with a tight spread. To see what a sale would realistically put in your hand, run the numbers through the purchase price calculator.

Here is the wrinkle that catches Irish buyers out. Investment gold is exempt from VAT in Ireland — the exemption sits in the Value-Added Tax Consolidation Act 2010, section 90(1) and Schedule 1, paragraph 9(1), Ireland's enactment of the EU-wide investment gold rules. Silver, platinum and palladium get no such treatment. VAT is already inside the shelf price, and it makes the premium look alarming at first glance.

The rate charged on silver, platinum and palladium in Ireland is the standard 23 %. Whether an Irish dealer may use the margin scheme for precious metals is not settled, and we will not pretend otherwise in either direction: nothing published puts the question beyond doubt. The calculator therefore takes the cautious road, applies the full standard rate to the whole price and marks the resulting band as an estimate. If a seller quotes you a margin-scheme price, it is entirely reasonable to ask in writing which VAT treatment the invoice relies on.

The calculator measures your quoted price against the bare metal value, so on silver, platinum and palladium read the premium as VAT included. That is not a slip in the arithmetic — it is genuinely what leaves your account. For a fair reading, line up comparable purchases: silver coin against silver coin, bar against bar, from sellers invoicing the same way.

Irish tax position last reviewed: 08/08/2026.

Premiums are not fixed — they breathe with the market. When buyers pile in during a scare, or a mint runs short of blanks, premiums jump, sometimes to several times their normal level, and delivery dates drift out by weeks. When the market is quiet and stock is plentiful, they settle back down.

For a buyer that cuts both ways. A slim premium usually means a relaxed, well-supplied market and a comfortable moment to buy physical. Sharply swollen premiums say the physical market is under strain, whatever the spot price is doing. If you are buying for the long haul, a low premium will serve you better than trying to guess the perfect day.