Gold pricing question

[SilverJack]

I have a quick question concerning the pricing of gold bullion. I've never purchased gold as I've always been more interested in silver but I priced buying some Gold Eagles and noticed that both the buying price and the selling price on APMEX were above spot price at that time. Is that typical of gold? For silver, I'm more accustomed to seeing buy prices 7% below spot and selling price either at spot or just above (for ASEs).

I'm trying to figure out why the market would have a spot price that is less than the buy price. Was that just an anomaly with APMEX for yesterday? I know I could watch the market and visit other selling sites to answer this question in one form by myself. I suspect that there is always a premium for physical gold above spot that causes this but what I'm really interested in is getting that presumption confirmed. And augmented if there's another factor at play here that I'm overlooking.

Thank you in advance for your response.

[deacon]

I'm sure this has been answered before.

Supply and demand my friend. If people's demand is higher than APMEX's supply, then APMEX has to buy at a higher price.

Eagles are the most liquid gold. There has been a good dip in the last week, so gold prices have dropped. However, people usually sell when gold is high. So, now APMEX has a problem. How can APMEX get more people to sell to them? By offering over spot.

Just like how you can sell SAEs to dealers for spot +1, you can sell GAEs for spot +20.

Foreign, while the same amount of silver or gold, are not as liquid as Eagles. So the premium is lower.

TL;DR, Some coins carry higher premiums than others.