Delivered price versus advertised price
The advertised price is not the price. A worked example of how delivery, card fees and quantity change which dealer is genuinely cheapest.
6 min read · Updated
The headline number is a marketing number
Every bullion dealer knows buyers sort by advertised price. That creates a strong incentive to make the headline figure as low as possible and recover the difference elsewhere — in delivery, in a card surcharge, or in a minimum order value.
None of this is dishonest. It is simply how a competitive market with a comparison-shopping audience behaves. But it means the advertised price cannot be used to rank dealers, and a comparison site that does so is not comparing anything useful.
A worked example
Two dealers, the same coin, one unit. Illustrative figures.
| Dealer A | Dealer B | |
|---|---|---|
| Advertised price | £599.00 | £605.00 |
| Delivery | £24.95 | £0.00 |
| Card surcharge (1.5%) | £9.36 | £9.08 |
| Total you pay | £633.31 | £614.08 |
| Cheapest? | No | Yes, by £19.23 |
Quantity changes the answer
This is the part most comparisons miss entirely. Delivery is charged once per order, not once per coin, so it becomes less significant as quantity rises. Many dealers also apply price breaks at 5, 10 or 25 units.
The result is that the cheapest dealer for one coin is frequently not the cheapest dealer for five. A dealer with a slightly higher unit price, free delivery over a threshold and a break at five units can move from third place to first as soon as you increase the quantity.
This is why quantity is a first-class control on every comparison here, and why the ranking is recalculated rather than merely re-sorted when you change it.
Fees that cannot be verified
Sometimes a mandatory cost genuinely cannot be established without going through checkout — a card surcharge that depends on the card, or a delivery rate that varies by destination.
When that happens, the honest options are to exclude the fee and say so, or to guess. We exclude it and label the total as incomplete. A total described as "including all fees" when a fee is missing is worse than no total at all, because it invites a decision on a number that is wrong.
- Complete — every mandatory cost we know of is included.
- Delivery estimated — delivery is included, but from our stored rule rather than the listing itself.
- Payment fee unknown — a surcharge may apply that we could not verify. It is not in the total.
- Collection only — no delivery cost applies.
- Incomplete — a mandatory component is missing. Treat the total as a floor, not a price.
What to check before you order
Wherever you buy, and whatever comparison you used, four checks are worth thirty seconds.
- Take the total through to the dealer’s checkout before committing — that is the only number that is definitively real.
- Check how you are paying. Bank transfer is usually free; credit cards often are not.
- Check the delivery threshold. Adding one more coin sometimes costs less than paying for delivery.
- Check stock and dispatch time. A cheaper price on a coin that ships in three weeks is a different product from one that ships tomorrow.