Silver Price Today

Where today’s silver spot quote comes from

The silver price today is set by trading in COMEX silver futures in New York and the over-the-counter market in London. The spot figure you see is a continuous read of that trading, quoted in U.S. dollars per troy ounce of pure silver. No dealer, mint or government sets it.

The nearly 24-hour futures market

COMEX silver trades electronically from Sunday evening to Friday afternoon, Eastern time, with a short daily break. One standard contract covers 5,000 troy ounces. That is why the price of silver this morning can differ from last night’s close before New York even opens: traders in Asia and Europe were active, and the quote followed them. Silver keeps the same schedule as gold, laid out on our precious metals market hours page.

The London benchmark

Once a day, at noon London time, the LBMA Silver Price is set through an electronic auction. It replaced the old London silver fix in 2014. Refiners, mints and many industrial supply contracts settle against that single number, so when someone asks about the “silver fix” or London spot silver, this is the figure they mean. It is a snapshot. Spot keeps moving after it.

Why two websites show slightly different silver prices

• Some sites display the bid (what a market maker pays), others the ask (what it charges), and some the midpoint between them.
• Feeds refresh at different speeds. A quote a minute old can be several cents off on a busy day.
• A few sites quote the front-month futures contract instead of spot. Futures usually sit a little above spot because of storage and financing costs.

Differences of a few cents are normal. A gap of a dollar or more usually means one source is stale or quoting a different instrument.

Reading silver stamps before you weigh anything

Spot applies to pure silver. Most household silver is an alloy, and some of it contains no silver at all. Check the mark first, because it decides the multiplier you use later.

Silver-looking metals that are not silver

“EP”, “EPNS” and “silverplate” mean a thin coat of silver over a base metal, usually brass or nickel alloy. The silver layer is too thin to be worth refining. “German silver” and “nickel silver” are copper-nickel-zinc alloys with no silver in them at all, despite the name. Pieces stamped with a maker’s name and a pattern but no fineness number are usually plated.

Pieces where the scale lies

Candlesticks, compotes and some bowls marked “weighted” are filled with pitch or cement under a thin sterling shell. Sterling knives nearly always have hollow handles filled with cement and a stainless steel blade, so only a small part of the knife’s weight is silver. Hairbrushes and mirrors with sterling backs are mostly wood or plastic underneath.

Simple checks at home

Silver is not magnetic, so a piece that grabs a magnet is steel with a coating. The test only rules things out: copper and brass are not magnetic either. Silver also conducts heat very well, so an ice cube set on a thick silver bar melts noticeably faster than on most other metals. Neither test proves purity. Acid test kits and a buyer’s electronic analyzer do that.

Turning a sterling piece into a melt figure

The math is short once you have an honest weight in grams.

1. Weigh the item on a gram scale and subtract anything that is not silver, such as knife blades, stones or felt.
2. Divide the grams by 31.1035 to get troy ounces.
3. Multiply by 0.925 for sterling, or 0.900 for coin silver.
4. Multiply by the spot price per ounce shown above.

Worked example: a set of sterling teaspoons

Twelve sterling teaspoons weigh 240 grams together. That is 7.716 troy ounces of alloy, or 7.137 ounces of pure silver after multiplying by 0.925. At an example silver price of $30 per ounce, the silver content is worth about $214. At today’s spot the same arithmetic gives the live figure. For small items, the silver price per gram page skips the ounce conversion.

Melt value is a ceiling, not an offer

Refiners and buyers pay a percentage of melt, because sterling must be melted and refined before the silver can be sold again. Retail coins and bars run the other way: they cost more than spot to cover minting, shipping and dealer margin. Some states add sales tax to bullion purchases, which our state sales tax table tracks.

Buying silver by form

• Government coins, such as the one-ounce Silver Eagle, carry legal tender status and the highest premium per ounce among common products.
• Rounds from private mints look like coins but have no face value, and usually cost less over spot.
• Ten-ounce and 100-ounce bars carry lower premiums per ounce, at the cost of being harder to sell in small pieces.
• Pre-1965 U.S. dimes, quarters and halves trade close to their silver content.

The American Silver Eagle page covers that coin’s specs and pricing in detail.

Supply that doesn’t respond quickly to price

Most silver is not mined for its own sake. A large share comes out of the ground as a by-product of lead, zinc, copper and gold mining. Those mines are planned around their main metal, so a jump in silver alone does not make them dig faster. Mexico and Peru have long been the largest producers.

Demand has a large industrial side: silver is the best electrical conductor of all metals, and it goes into electronics, solar panels, brazing alloys and antimicrobial coatings. Much of that silver is used in tiny amounts per product and is never recovered. When factories slow down, silver usually falls harder than gold. When they speed up, it tends to rise harder.

That mix of rigid supply and cyclical demand is why silver’s daily moves in percentage terms are usually larger than gold’s. Put silver’s chart next to the gold price today on a volatile day and the difference is easy to see.

Warehouse stocks and what traders watch

COMEX publishes daily inventory reports for silver held in its approved New York-area vaults. Metal listed as registered has a warrant attached and can be delivered against a futures contract right away. Metal listed as eligible meets the exchange’s standards but is simply stored there for its owner. Traders watch the registered figure because a shrinking pool of deliverable bars can squeeze the front-month contract. Exchange-traded funds that hold physical silver also report their holdings daily, which gives another public read on investment demand. Neither figure predicts the price, but sharp changes in either tend to draw attention in market commentary.

Taxes when you sell

The IRS treats physical silver, including coins and bars, as a collectible. Long-term gains are taxed at your ordinary rate up to a maximum of 28%, rather than the lower long-term capital gains rates. Short-term gains are taxed as ordinary income.