Live Gold Price Board and Tracker

Reading a live gold price tracker: what each number means

A live gold price tracker shows the latest traded price of gold per troy ounce and refreshes it on a timer. On this board that means real-time spot prices for gold, silver, platinum and palladium, refreshed about every 30 seconds and usually less than a minute old, with the day’s change taken from COMEX and NYMEX futures.

That one sentence explains most of what people misread on a price screen. The figure is a market reference point. It is not what a shop will pay you, and it is not what a coin will cost you.

Spot, futures and the delay

Spot is the price for gold delivered now. A futures price is for delivery in a named month, and the most active contract, the front month, is the one most live screens follow. Because holding metal until a later date costs money in financing and storage, the futures price normally sits slightly above a pure spot quote. The gap is small in calm markets, but it exists, and it explains why two respectable sites can show numbers a few dollars apart at the same minute. Our page on the gold spot price goes further into how that reference is built.

The delay is the second source of disagreement. Exchange data sent without a real-time license is typically held back, and the board says so on screen. For watching the trend of a morning, a quarter-hour lag hardly matters. For timing a large trade to the minute, it does.

What changes between refreshes

Everything on the board is derived from four metal prices, so when gold ticks, several lines move together:

• The gold line itself and its percentage change against the previous settlement.
• Every karat value, since 18K or 14K is simply the pure-gold price scaled by its gold fraction and converted to a gram or a pennyweight.
• The gold bullion coins, whose melt value follows one troy ounce of gold each.
• The gold/silver ratio, which shifts whenever either metal moves, even if the other is still.

Silver moves the silver coin lines and the ratio. Platinum and palladium stand alone. If the ratio is new to you, the gold/silver ratio guide explains why traders watch it.

Why the numbers freeze on weekends and at 5 p.m.

Metals futures trade nearly around the clock on the exchange’s electronic platform, but not quite. When the board’s status reads closed, the last price simply holds until trading resumes.

A flat line on a Saturday is therefore normal, not a broken feed. The gold market hours page lists the global sessions from Sydney to New York.

Following gold and silver on a phone, a computer or a wall screen

The same live gold and silver prices look very different depending on the screen. A phone is for a quick glance. A desk monitor suits someone who keeps a tab open during the working day. A TV is for a room full of people who will read it from several steps away.

On a phone or computer the board works as a personal gold dashboard: four metals, the ratio and your choice of karat lines on a single screen, with no login. On a TV it becomes a display for customers, and that changes the rules. People at a counter read a posted number as an offer, so the store has to be clear about what the figure means. That is the subject of the next two sections.

Grams or pennyweights?

The board can show karat prices per gram or per pennyweight (dwt). Jewelry buyers and refiners in the United States have long worked in pennyweights; there are 20 dwt in a troy ounce, and one pennyweight is about 1.555 grams. Pick the unit your scale reads in. A shop that weighs in grams but posts pennyweight prices forces every customer to do a conversion in their head, which breeds mistrust. The gold price per pennyweight page covers the conversion in detail.

How a gold buyer turns melt value into posted prices

Most coin shops and gold buyers publish their offers as a share of melt value. Melt value is the worth of the pure metal inside an item at the market price, before any refining cost or margin. A store that pays “80% of melt” pays 80 cents for each dollar of gold content. The board’s setup form lets a store enter that percentage, and it lets coin sellers enter a separate percentage over melt for gold and for silver coins.

Worked example: a buying price for 14K

The numbers below use an example gold price of $3,000 per troy ounce and an example buying rate of 80%. Neither is a current figure.

1. Divide the ounce price by 31.1035 to get pure gold per gram: $3,000 ÷ 31.1035 = $96.45.
2. Multiply by the karat fraction. 14K is 14 parts in 24, or 0.5833: $96.45 × 0.5833 = $56.26 of gold per gram.
3. Apply the buying rate: $56.26 × 0.80 = $45.01 per gram offered.
4. For a pennyweight instead, start from $3,000 ÷ 20 = $150 per dwt of pure gold, then × 0.5833 × 0.80 = $70.00 per dwt.
5. Multiply by the weight of the item’s gold, after removing stones, steel springs or anything that is not gold.

Sellers can run the same arithmetic on their own pieces with the scrap gold calculator, which is the fastest way to see whether a posted percentage is competitive.

Coin premiums over melt

Bullion coins sell above melt because minting, distribution and dealer costs sit on top of the metal. The board’s coin section starts from the gold or silver content of each coin, and a store’s premium setting is added to that figure.

Why a Gold Eagle’s melt equals one ounce

The 1 oz American Gold Eagle is 22K and weighs about 1.0909 troy ounces in total, but the alloy is designed so the coin contains exactly one troy ounce of gold. The Krugerrand is built the same way. The Gold Buffalo and the Canadian Maple Leaf are .9999 fine and simply weigh one ounce. So all four share one melt value, which is why they show the same figure on the board. With an example premium of 5% set by a store, a coin at an example melt of $3,000 would be posted at $3,150.

Silver works the same way with different content: a Morgan dollar holds about 0.7734 troy ounces of silver, and a bag of 90% silver coins is usually valued at 0.715 ounces per dollar of face value, an allowance for wear. Our page on the American Gold Eagle lists that coin’s full specifications.

Keeping a counter display reliable and honest all day

A screen that shows a stale price, goes black at 2 p.m. or leaves a ghost image of the logo after a year does more harm than no screen. Most of these problems come from device settings rather than from the board itself.

Device settings that trip up an all-day display

• Turn off the TV’s eco or auto power-off timer. Many sets switch off after a few hours without a remote press, even with a picture on screen.
• On a mini PC or laptop driving the TV over HDMI, set the operating system’s display sleep and screen saver to “never” while plugged in.
• Keep the browser window in front. Streaming devices and phones often suspend a browser that moves to the background, and a suspended page stops refreshing.
• Use a wired Ethernet connection where you can. If Wi-Fi is the only option, place the device where the signal is strong, and avoid guest networks that ask you to accept a login page every day.

The board itself asks the browser to keep the screen awake where that is supported, shifts its layout slightly every few minutes, reloads every six hours and prints a warning if prices stop arriving. Those help, but they cannot override a TV that is set to turn itself off.

Burn-in on OLED and older panels

OLED panels, and plasma sets before them, can keep a faint permanent image of anything shown in the same place for very long periods. LCD screens are far less prone to it but can show temporary retention. A dark theme lowers the risk because fewer pixels are lit brightly, and the small periodic shift spreads the wear. Switching the screen off outside business hours, rather than leaving it on overnight, does more than any software trick.

Posting prices customers can trust

A price screen in a store is read as a promise, so it should say what it is. The board prints its data source, the time of the last price and the word indicative in the footer, and it is worth leaving those visible rather than covering them. The number on the wall is a reference. The price a customer is actually paid depends on testing, weighing and the rate agreed at the counter.

A few habits make that plain to customers:

• Say near the screen that posted buying prices are per gram or per pennyweight of the stated karat, and that final offers follow testing.
• If your offer is locked at a set time of day rather than moving with the market, say so, and note the time.
• Show the melt figure alongside your buying price, so the percentage you pay is visible and a customer can compare it with the live gold price on their own phone.

Clear sourcing and a visible timestamp cost nothing, and they answer the question every seller has at the counter: where does this number come from, and is it current?