The Spot Gold and Silver Prices shown here in the Kitco Gold Chart are updated every minute. The spot price of gold or silver or any of the precious metals is the continuously changing market price of the metal in its not-manufactured form. When investing in gold and silver, bullion coins are usually considered to be the safest way to go. This is because the precious metals coins issued by the governments of the various countries are known and trusted to contain the amount of the metal that is stated.

Acquiring gold coins or silver coins at a price that is close to their metal’s spot price, is about as good a bargain as an investor is likely to to find on the open market.

Some of the best gold coin prices can be found on eBay. On eBay, sellers of gold coins in particular have even been known to offer them at a discount from the spot price, to buyers with good feedback on a fair number of transactions.

Here are some common terms associated with gold buying and selling:

Bullion: gold in bar, wafer or other unworked form, valued purely for itself rather than for its decorative or coinage worth.

Troy ounce: the standard measurement of gold bullion, equal to 1.097 regular ounces. The standard gold bar is 400 ounces; anyone purchasing less than 400 ounces must pay a charge for fabrication of the gold into smaller sizes.

London fixing: historically a twice-daily setting of gold prices by major bullion dealers who meet at a London bank in the morning and afternoon about 5:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. EST and agree on a basic gold price after consulting with their clients to determine demand. Trading generally begins at this level, and many American dealers linked their prices to the London fixings.

Futures: contracts promising delivery at a later date at a price that is agreed on at the time of sale. If you buy a contract in January for March delivery, for example, you will get your gold in March and must pay the amount you agreed to in January. If you sell a March contract, you must deliver the gold in March and will get paid the amount agreed on in January.

Ingot: a bar of gold or other metal.

Assay: a test to determine the purity of gold. Anyone who buys gold, other than bullion coins, and takes possession of it may want to have it assayed before reselling it in order to prove it has not been adulterated, changed or tampered with. The cost varies depending on the size and amount of gold involved.

Purity: a measurement of how much gold is in a particular item. The purest gold is generally described as 999.9 fine, meaning there is one part per thousand of impurities. This is generally equivalent to the type of gold in 24-carat jewelry.

Planchet: a tiny wafer of gold

The legislation allowing U.S. citizens to own and deal in gold by the end of the year was signed into law by President Gerald R. Ford on Wednesday, August 14, 1974.

United States citizens had been prohibited from owning gold, other than in the form of coins, jewelry or for industrial and artistic use, since 1934, when the nation went off the gold standard.

The gold ownership action was tied as an amendment to a bill that provided $1.5 billion as the U.S. contribution to the International Development Association. This is the so-called “soft loan” agency of the World Bank.

Language in the bill gave President Ford the option of permitting private gold ownership before Dec. 31, 1974, if he decided that negotiations with other nations on currency exchange rates and balance of payments problems had reached the stage where removal of regulations on private ownership of gold would not adversely affect the international monetary position of the United States.

Thus, Americans were still barred from investing directly in gold bullion until the end of 1974, or until Ford gave the word.

Sen. James A. McClure, R-Idaho, a chief sponsor of the gold amendment, termed Ford’s signing “a sweet victory for all Americans for a restoration of their full economic rights.”

Roosevelt took the gold out of the dollar. President Kennedy took the silver out of the dollar. President Johnson took the silver out of the silver. But with worldwide millions the wisdom of generations shows that gold is real wealth and paper money or bank balance are not. Gold remains universally and timelessly accepted and unquestioned.

Gold is a commodity. Like other commodities its price swings can be enormous, vicious and, like the stock market, loaded with speculation and surprises.

Since 1924, the New York Federal Reserve Bank has acted as a gold warehouse, a haven for foreign gold away from war and shifting political fortunes. Part of the gold came by ship on the eve of World War II. Some has been bought from the United States in transactions which move it from the Treasury’s assay office a few blocks away to the Federal Reserve Bank. While statesmen and financiers the world over debate the role of gold in international payments, workmen called stackers routinely weigh and shift the gold in the New York bank.

Gold bars cast or melted down in this country are toughly the shape of an ordinary house brick. Foreign cast or melted jars are trapezoidal,that is wider at the base and angling in toward the top. Color tones vary from shiny bright to dull. Each bar weights 27 to 28 pounds and is worth well over a half million dollars these days.

Gold is the only money completely acceptable everywhere. Grave doubts about paper money are occurring now. When people doubt the value of paper money they traditionally flock to gold. Then, no matter what happens, they feel, they have wealth.

Gold refiners produce gold wafers in sizes that range from 5 grams to 100 ounces. They are made from 400-ounce bars, the size of an ordinary brick.

There are two ways to break gold bricks down into a workable size. Under one process, workers squeeze the bar through rollers until it is thinned out to 15-foot strips. In the other method the gold is broken down into chunks, melted and poured into molds. Berger prefers the rolling process, but both are used by Engelhard Minerals and Chemical Corp., one of the nation’s largest refiners of gold.

After 10 passes through the rollers, the strips are taken to a punch press, where a worker unfurls and feeds them into the machine. A second worker operates the die that cuts the strip into one-ounce wafers known as planchets. In an adjoining room several workers check the weight of the planchets, sending any that are too heavy or light out to be reprocessed. Another machine stamps the accepted planchets with the Engelhard name and an insignia number.

The scrap from the punch press is carefully gathered and crushed. Eventually it will be melted down and put through the process again.

The spot gold price and silver price can fluctuate from minute to minute. Knowing the spot price is important when trying to buy gold for the best possible price.