How the Retail Premium Index is made
How bullion premiums are calculated for the Retail Premium Index: what is measured, SD Bullion's source records, reference price, weighting, and affiliation.
The affiliation
SilverTrade is affiliated with SD Bullion, a precious-metals retailer, and this phase of the index is built from SD Bullion's own records, published with its consent. That is the disclosure, and it is also the point: this history exists nowhere else. Figures are computed by SilverTrade under the methodology on this page, verified by independent recomputation before publication. See our Editorial Policy.
What we measure
The Retail Premium Index publishes the average premium paid on retail cash/wire orders at SD Bullion, monthly, for each benchmark bullion product: the price paid per ounce, divided by the metal value per ounce recorded at the time of sale, minus one, expressed as a percentage and in dollars per ounce. A premium is what the buyer pays above metal value; it includes the mint's and the distributor's charges as well as the dealer's, so it is not a measure of dealer margin.
Silver (12)
- American Silver Eagle 1 oz
- Canadian Silver Maple Leaf 1 oz
- British Silver Britannia 1 oz
- Austrian Silver Philharmonic 1 oz
- Australian Silver Kangaroo 1 oz
- South African Silver Krugerrand 1 oz
- Mexican Silver Libertad 1 oz
- Generic 1 oz silver round
- 10 oz silver bar
- 100 oz silver bar
- 1 kilo silver bar
- 90% junk silver ($1 face value)
Gold (10)
- American Gold Eagle 1 oz
- American Gold Buffalo 1 oz
- Canadian Gold Maple Leaf 1 oz
- British Gold Britannia 1 oz
- Austrian Gold Philharmonic 1 oz
- South African Gold Krugerrand 1 oz
- Australian Gold Kangaroo 1 oz
- Generic 1 oz gold bar (minted)
- American Gold Eagle 1/10 oz
- 10 oz gold bar
Where the data comes from
SD Bullion's own completed retail transaction records, going back to March 2019. Cash/wire prices only (card prices run higher and would distort the series); cancelled and refunded orders excluded as of each publish; non-retail pricing tiers excluded: this is a retail index. The most recent months are refreshed at each publish; earlier months stand as recorded.
No customer information of any kind enters the pipeline.
The reference price
Each transaction's premium is measured against the metal value SD Bullion recorded on that transaction at the time it was priced: a business record made in the ordinary course, not a quote pulled after the fact. The index publishes premiums only, at monthly resolution, never the underlying metal prices themselves.
How the averages are computed
Each month's figure is the ounce-weighted average: every transaction contributes in proportion to the metal it moved, so one large order counts for its size and a thousand small orders count for theirs. A simple per-transaction average is also computed as a cross-check and reported in the verification record; where the two diverge meaningfully, the verification record says why. The headline figure for each metal is a composite: the median across the benchmark products of their monthly ounce-weighted averages, shown from October 2019, the first month with complete benchmark coverage.
Reading the figures
These are historical statistics, not price quotes or offers, and no single order should be expected to match a monthly figure. Orders varied by payment method (card pricing runs above cash/wire and is not in the series); by order size (larger orders transact at tighter premiums, so the ounce-weighted figure sits below a simple per-order average and a smaller order will typically have paid more than the month's figure); by product; and by the day within the month.
Promotions and outliers
Promotional sales are excluded from the headline series and counted. No figure is trimmed or smoothed: a transaction is either included, or excluded under a stated rule, or individually reviewed, and the counts of each are part of the verification record.
Product mapping
SKUs change over the years. Each SKU is mapped to its benchmark product type by a curated, versioned mapping reviewed against SD Bullion's product history; unmapped volume is reported, never guessed into a bucket.
The roadmap
The index grows into an anonymized multi-dealer panel: premiums tracked daily across major US dealers, counts published, names never. When the panel launches, its series will appear alongside this history as separately labeled series, measured against a different reference, and never spliced.
Revisions
A published figure is never silently changed. If a capture is corrected (a parsing error, a dealer page mis-read), the correction is published as a new version of the dataset, and the page shows the corrected figure with its capture date. Days on which too few dealers reported are skipped and shown as gaps, never filled in.
How to cite
Cite figures as “per the Retail Premium Index (SilverTrade)” with the capture date. A copyable citation line appears under every chart.
Retail Premium Index (SilverTrade), silver composite, August 2026. silvertrade.com/premiums/
The methodology on this page is versioned; material changes are noted here with their effective date.