How to Sell Your Costco Gold Bars

Costco entered the precious metals market in 2023 when it began offering gold bars. Quickly, the retail giant became one of the biggest dealers in the marketplace.

Costco members, in search of defenses against rising inflation, began snapping up the 1-oz. bars as fast as they could. Costco now reports sales of roughly $200 million per month entirely with the gold bars, and the store routinely sells out of them.

If you happened to purchase some of these bars on a bit of a whim, don’t feel bad – the bars are authentic gold, and gold rarely fails to retain or increase its value over time. However, since you are now a bona fide precious metals investor, it’s important that you understand how trading gold works, where and how you can sell your gold (or buy more), and how to make sure you get the appropriate value on either side of the transaction.

So, if you are a Costco customer-turned-gold-investor, this page is for you. We’ll walk you through how all of this stuff works.

Where to Sell Your Costco Gold Bar

The good news is that you have as many ways to sell your Costco gold bars as you’d ever need. Between the innumerable online dealers (like JM Bullion) and the coin shops that are likely near to you, you can take your pick about how you want to realize the cash value of your bars.

However, there are definite benefits and drawbacks to doing business with both online and in-person precious metals dealers. As we mentioned above, you can often find better prices online because of the competitive pressures involved with the business.

You also have more information at your fingertips about the reliability of online dealers and the prices they offer. It is much easier to shop around and ensure that you’ve chosen a reputable dealer through online discussion boards and the availability of Better Business Bureau information.

To that point, you should shop around. We feel as though our prices are extremely competitive, but you should never just take our word for it.

We are also open around the clock. If you decide to sell your gold at three in the morning, we are here for you. So, you can’t beat the convenience of an online dealer in terms of making a deal.

However, online dealers cannot match in-person shops for their transaction speed. You can stroll into a coin shop or precious metals dealer with your Costco gold and walk out with cash in hand in a matter of minutes. Even at our best, we online dealers can’t finish our business so quickly.

We also cannot match the in-person experience of speaking with a flesh-and-blood human about what you want to do. Our trained representatives are very nice people, but it’s a different thing to speak on the phone than to look the dealer in the eye. So, if you want a more personal touch, you’ll have to seek out a person. Just be aware that they probably can’t give you the same deal that we can.

Related article: Compare Costco vs. JM Bullion

Instructions for Selling Gold to JM Bullion

We hope that you’ll consider selling your Costco gold to us here at JM Bullion. If you’re still reading right now, you’ve no doubt gotten a sense about how easily we can assist you.

If you’re ready to sell, here’s the JM Bullion sales process:

1. Lock in your price – Chat, call, or email us about the amount of gold that you’d like to sell. Our representatives will issue you a fair price for your gold, and you can lock in that price immediately. Even if the price of gold happens to decrease, you’ll still get the value you quoted.
2. Ship the gold to us – After you lock in your price, you’ll receive an email with detailed shipping instructions and a mailing label. Follow these instructions to the letter, as we have insurance requirements to meet when we have gold in transit. Once you’ve packaged your gold as indicated, send it to us in the manner described.
3. Receive your money – We send your quoted price to you in one of three ways: electronic check (ACH), bank wire, or paper check. E-checks are free, but bank wires and paper checks come with an additional transaction fee. For e-checks and bank wires, you usually receive your funds in 1 – 3 business days – obviously, it can take a bit longer for a paper check.

And that’s it. It’s as easy as can be. You can start the process whenever you want. Reach out and chat, phone, or email us, and let’s work something out for that Costco gold!

How Much Will You Get for Your Costco Gold?

The question of how much you will get for your Costco gold is unsurprisingly the biggest one on your mind. Unfortunately, it comes with the most frustrating of answers: it depends.

However, if you know upon what it depends, then you might be able to get a clearer idea. So, let’s start by talking about the price of gold.

Bid and Ask Prices

Investors and people in the precious metals industry often talk about the price of gold as the “spot price.” The definition of spot price is a bit technical – it has to do with current prices of futures contracts on gold – but its primary definition of spot price is the current price at which gold can be bought or sold for immediate delivery. You may also see the gold spot price referenced as the “ask” price.

There is also a counterpart to the spot price, which is usually known as the “bid” price. The bid price is the amount at which owners of gold are willing to sell an ounce of gold. Ideally, these two prices are quite close together, as it indicates that buyers and sellers are mostly in agreement about the prices involved, and trading is occurring freely and efficiently.

Generally speaking, the ask price is going to be higher than the bid price, and the ask is the price that you’ll see on all of the news tickers. The takeaway is that you’ll likely have to accept a lower price than the ask in order to sell your gold.

HOWEVER, there’s another element in play that can drastically affect the price of gold that you can find with precious metals dealers. That element is the markup.

The markup is the amount that precious metals dealers, online or live, add to the buy prices of gold in order to create profit for themselves. In effect, precious metals dealers create scenarios where they pay less to buy gold than they do to sell it – which is the very essence of capitalism.

You should always expect to pay more than the spot price when you buy gold. However, you should not accept less than the bid price when you sell.

Online vs. Retail Dealers

So, the keys to smart investing is to limit the amount of markup you pay when you buy gold and to maximize the value you realize when you sell.

Typically, reputable dealers will charge between 1% and 10% or more (depending on the product and market conditions) when you buy their gold as a markup. Thankfully, in keeping with its overall business strategy, Costco tends to fall on the lower end of that percentage spectrum. Of course, there would be a way to factor in your membership fee as an additional part of the markup, but we’re going to assume that it’s a sunk cost because we’re guessing you didn’t join Costco specifically to buy gold bars and nothing else.

In order to recover that premium you paid, you’ll either need the gold to appreciate over that percentage, or you’ll need to find a dealer paying a higher price than you purchased – or both. Most of the time, the better sales prices (and buy prices, for that matter) are found online, as online dealers like us have to compete with other dealers constantly.

Because you can switch your loyalties and visit another “store” in a matter of seconds, online dealers simply can’t afford to have noncompetitive pricing. However, retail stores don’t have that same problem, as they are usually not next door to one another.

So, although it’s not an absolute – retail stores will run special deals on occasion – you are much more likely to find good prices on your Costco gold online.