About Gold by the Pound

Gold by the Pound Editorial Team · Updated November 3, 2026

Gold by the Pound is a small, independent website about one idea: what it takes to buy gold in the quantity most people picture when they imagine owning some. We publish the live gold price per pound in US dollars, show what a pound is as a real order of coins and bars, and provide two free calculators, one that turns a budget into a weight and one that checks a seller's premium.

We don't sell, buy, ship or store gold, and we can't take an order. We're a publisher. The site is funded by one advertising relationship, set out in full at the bottom of this page.

Where the Numbers Come From

The headline price is spot. The large figure at the top of our pages is the gold spot price published by gold-api.com, multiplied by 14.583 to express it per pound. Spot is the wholesale price of a troy ounce of pure gold for immediate delivery.

Charts and history are futures. The chart, the table of recent closes, the 52-week range and the record high use daily closing prices for COMEX gold futures (the GC contract), obtained via Yahoo Finance. Futures have a long, consistent daily record, which spot feeds don't. The two prices sit close together but aren't identical; right now futures are +$12.40 per ounce from spot. We label each figure with its source and never blend them.

Everything else is calculated. Values for coins, bars, budgets and premiums are worked out from spot using fixed definitions: 453.59237 grams to the pound, 31.1034768 grams to the troy ounce, and so 14.5833 troy ounces to the pound. Coin weights come from the federal statute that defines them (31 U.S.C. §5112) and from the issuing mints. No price is typed into a page by hand.

How Fresh the Prices Are

The whole site is rebuilt from the data sources every 6 hours. On top of that, while a page is open in your browser the headline price checks gold-api.com again about once a minute and updates the figures that depend on it.

Every page that shows a price also shows the date and time of that price. If a data source is down when the site rebuilds, we keep the last good figures with their original timestamp. A slightly old price with an honest label is more useful than a blank or a guess, and we never fill gaps with estimates.

With JavaScript switched off, every page still shows complete, correct figures from the most recent rebuild. The calculators need JavaScript to respond to what you type, so each one sits above a plain table that gives the same answers for common cases.

Editorial Standards

• Facts are traced. Company details are read from the company's own website and its Better Business Bureau profile, with the date. Rules about IRAs, tax and insurance are taken from the IRS, the tax code, the FDIC and similar primary sources, and linked.
• Company claims are labeled. Where a number is the company's own (a review count, a total sold), we say so.
• Unknowns are stated. Where a company doesn't publish something a buyer needs, such as a minimum order, we say it isn't published. We don't fill the gap from third-party sites.
• No cost figures for IRA providers. Charges quoted around the web are frequently out of date. We tell you what to ask for in writing.
• Typical ranges are called typical. Premium ranges on this site come from published dealer guides and describe normal conditions. They aren't quotes.
• No advice. We explain how things work. We don't tell anyone what to do with their money, and nothing here is financial, tax or legal advice.
• No invented experts. Pages are written and checked by the site's editorial team. We don't attach credentials we can't show.

Corrections

This site has no contact form, phone line or email address. That's deliberate: we're a small publisher with nothing to sell directly, and we'd rather not collect anyone's details.

It does mean you can't write to us about an error. What we do instead is re-check: prices are recomputed from source at every rebuild, and facts about companies and rules are re-read and re-dated when pages are revised. The "Updated" date on each page is the date of its data. When we correct something beyond the routine price refresh, the page's date changes with it.

How We Make Money

We earn a commission if you become a customer of Goldco through a link on this site. That is the site's only source of income. It costs you nothing, and it doesn't change the price Goldco quotes you.

What that looks like on the page:

• The green buttons labeled "GET THE FREE GOLD & SILVER KIT" are advertising links to Goldco, and so is the offer box some visitors see when leaving a page. All carry rel="sponsored".
• Clicking one takes you to Goldco's page for its free kit. If you fill in that form, Goldco will contact you. You are giving your details to Goldco, not to us; we never see them.
• When we mention Goldco's free-silver offer we mark it with an asterisk and print Goldco's terms in full on the same page.

What the commission doesn't buy: Goldco has no say over our prices, calculators, premium ranges or wording. Our guide to where to buy gold by the pound says who Goldco suits and who should look elsewhere, lists what Goldco doesn't publish, and tells readers to check Goldco's quote with our premium calculator like any other.

We have not bought from Goldco as customers, and we don't present our description of it as a hands-on review.