About This Site
Quick answer: Gold Bar Guide is an independent editorial site that answers one family of questions: can you buy a gold bar from a bank, who actually sells one, and what should a bar cost. Prices come from a live gold feed, bank facts come from banks' own pages with the date we read them, and we are paid if a reader requests an information kit from the one dealer we feature.
Who runs this site
The site is written and maintained by an editorial team. We do not publish a named author, and we do not claim credentials we cannot show you. What you can check instead is the work: each page says what it relied on, names its sources in sentences, and carries a date. We have no contact channel on the site, no accounts and no forms, because we would rather the pages stand on what they show than on promises made in a private message.
We are a buying guide, not a dealer, a bank or an adviser. We do not sell gold, we do not hold anyone's money, and we do not tell you whether to buy or sell. Our job is narrower: to put the live gold number, the arithmetic and the evidence in front of you in plain words, so you can judge a quote yourself. If you want to start from the question that brings most readers here, our home page, buy gold bars from a bank, sets out the short answer and links to every guide.
Where the prices come from
Every price on the site is calculated from one live gold price, quoted per troy ounce. From it we work out the value of the gold in each bar size by weight, using the exact definition of the troy ounce, 31.1035 grams, rounded for display. Each figure is stamped with the time it was read, shown as the updated date at the top of the page and beside the live numbers.
These figures are spot values. They show the metal in the bar and nothing else, so they sit below what any seller will ask. We deliberately do not print a premium for any seller, because premiums change by the day and by the order, and a number copied from a web page last month can mislead you today. Where we show a premium, it is either your own arithmetic from a quote you typed into the checker, or it is labelled as an example and not a quote from anyone.
How we research banks
For each bank, we start with the bank's own site. A page that says the bank sells gold bars, with sizes and how to order, counts as the strongest evidence. A news report or a trade page counts for less, and we say so in the sentence when we rely on one. Lists compiled by other websites are the weakest, because we found some that name banks that no longer exist, and we do not repeat a claim we cannot trace to a page.
Each bank gets a short status word in the data tables, a link to the page we read and the date we read it. In the written pages, we describe what we found in words. For the large US banks, the honest statement is about our search: we looked, and we found no page offering gold bars. That is different from saying a bank never does so, and we avoid that stronger claim. Where we could not confirm something, we leave it out or say that we could not confirm it, and the bank pages end with a short list of those gaps. Read dates are written as full dates so they cannot drift.
How we make money
Gold Bar Guide features one dealer, Augusta Precious Metals. When a reader follows our link and requests Augusta's free information kit, Augusta may pay us. The reader pays nothing extra. The button says what it does: it leads to a form for the kit, and Augusta then contacts the reader by phone.
We chose to feature Augusta on stated criteria, which we explain on the page where to buy gold bars, and we are open about the fit. Augusta states a $50,000 minimum, as stated by Augusta, so it is not a source for a single bar, and every page that mentions it says so. Payment does not change a bank's status word, a price, a table or the arithmetic anywhere on the site. We do not accept payment from banks, and we offer no paid links or sponsored placement.
Two things are still true however we are paid. We do not predict the price of gold, and we do not give personal advice. Nothing here is financial, tax or legal advice, and if a tax question matters to you, a tax professional is the right person to ask.
How corrections happen
Facts change. A bank adds or drops a product, Costco revises a limit, a regulator updates a page. Every long guide carries an update history table, and when we change a fact, the entry says what changed and on what date. If a figure on a page looks wrong, check the date beside it and the source named in the sentence, because a changed fact usually means the source moved. We re-read the pages that carry the most weight, including bank pages and Costco's listings, before we mark a guide as current, and we replace any statement we can no longer confirm.