Every bullion dealer quotes two prices: one to sell metal and a lower one to buy it back. The distance between them determines what a holding must gain before a sale breaks even.
The spread pays for the dealer's risk
A dealer who buys metal owns it at a known price and cannot control what the market does before it is resold. The spread is compensation for carrying that exposure.
It also funds the work around the transaction: verification, storage, insurance, staff and the capital tied up in inventory that has not yet moved.
Because those costs are largely fixed per transaction, spreads on small trades are proportionally wider than spreads on large ones, which is visible in almost every dealer's price list.
Product type changes the width
Widely recognised coins and bars from major refiners trade on the tightest spreads, because a dealer can resell them quickly to almost any buyer.
Obscure formats, unfamiliar mint marks and damaged pieces are harder to move, so a dealer bids lower to protect against the delay and the possibility of having to send them for refining.
The same weight of metal can therefore carry very different exit prices depending purely on the form it happens to be in.
Inventory position moves the bid
A dealer already holding more of a product than expected sales will bid cautiously, since another purchase adds to a position that is not clearing.
A dealer short of stock will bid aggressively, sometimes close to or above the selling price of comparable inventory, in order to refill shelves quickly.
This is why buyback quotes from different dealers on the same day can differ noticeably, even though all of them are pricing from the same underlying market.
Stress conditions pull the two sides apart
When buying interest surges, selling premiums climb because supply of fabricated product is constrained while the underlying metal price is unchanged.
Buyback bids climb too, but usually by less and with a lag, so the spread widens exactly when trading activity is heaviest.
In the opposite case, a wave of selling leaves dealers overstocked and bids fall faster than offers, again widening the gap.
Comparing dealers means comparing round trips
An advertised low premium on the buy side tells only half the story. A dealer can offer attractive selling prices and quote weak bids to recover the difference.
The figure that matters is the round trip: the sell price of a product today set against the buyback bid for the same product today.
Expressed that way, the cost of a holding becomes a single number that can be compared across dealers, product sizes and formats before any metal is bought.