MEASURED · 5 OCTOBER 2026

How much is a gold bar worth? Every size, priced, and how much the value moves

A gold bar is worth its weight in troy ounces times the price of an ounce. That part takes one line. What a price page will not tell you is how much that number moves: what a kilobar gains or loses on an ordinary day, on a bad one, and over a bad year. We measured it on every London gold price since August 1971.

The short answer

Values at the London (LBMA) afternoon gold price of $4,163.40 per troy ounce on 29 September 2026, the daily London benchmark. That was 23% below the record of $5,405.00 on 29 January 2026. For today’s value, put today’s price into the calculator below.

Gold bar value calculator

Enter the weight and purity of a bar, coin or piece of jewellery and the current price per troy ounce. The result is the value of the gold inside it, what is often called its melt value.

Gold bar price by size

Bars are sold by weight, in grams, troy ounces or kilograms. The table prices every common size at the 29 September 2026 London price and at the January 2026 record, so you can see how much the same bar has already swung this year.

Value of the gold content at the LBMA Gold Price PM. Small bars cost more per ounce to buy than this, because a dealer’s premium covers making and selling them; we did not measure premiums.

How much does a gold bar weigh?

The bar in films and bank vaults is the London Good Delivery bar, the standard for the wholesale market. Under the London Bullion Market Association’s rules it must hold between 350 and 430 troy ounces of gold, about 10.89 to 13.37 kg or 24 to 29.5 pounds, at least 99.5% pure, and measures roughly 250 by 70 mm on top and 35 mm high. The usual figure of 400 ounces weighs 12.44 kg, about 27.4 pounds. At the 29 September 2026 price, a bar at the lower limit was worth $1,457,190 and one at the upper limit $1,790,262.

The last column is the trap. Gold is weighed in troy ounces of 31.1 grams, but a kitchen or postal scale reads ordinary ounces of 28.3 grams. A genuine 1 ounce bar shows as about 1.10 oz on a household scale; one that reads exactly 1.00 oz is about 9% light.

What a 1 kg gold bar was worth, 1971 to 2026

The same kilogram of gold, valued at the last London price of each year and at the three great peaks. Someone who bought one at the 21 January 1980 high paid $27,328 and saw it worth $8,824 at the end of 2000.

Every year’s average price since 1925, and every fall of 20% or more since 1971, is in gold price history.

How much a gold bar’s value moves in a day

Owning a bar means owning its daily swings. Over the last 252 London fixes, to 29 September 2026, the median move from one day to the next was 1.00%; 1 day in 20 it was 3.1% or more, and 1 day in 100 5.3% or more. That is about 1.9 times as jumpy as the long-run norm: across all 13,838 fixes since August 1971 the median move was 0.54%. In the last year 22.2% of days moved 2% or more, against 8.4% since 1971. Here is what those moves mean in dollars, at today’s value of each bar.

Typical day, 1 in 20 and 1 in 100 are the median, 95th and 99th percentile of the size of the move between consecutive afternoon fixes over the last 252 fixes, applied to each bar’s 29 September 2026 value. The worst day is the 13.24% fall on 22 January 1980, the day after the 1980 peak, applied to the same value. The worst day of the last year was 30 January 2026, −7.83%, the day after the 2026 record.

And over a year

Over the 12 months to 29 September 2026, a kilobar’s value ran from $122,986 on 30 September 2025 to $173,775 on 29 January 2026, and ended up 8.8%. Across all 13,587 one-year stretches since 1971, a bar was worth less at the end than at the start 38.6% of the time, lost 10% or more 16.3% of the time and 20% or more 5.6% of the time. The worst year, from 23 September 1980, took 41% off its value. Whether holding longer helped is measured in is gold a good investment?, and what has been driving the price in why is gold going up? The same arithmetic for coins is in how much is a gold coin worth?, for jewellery in how much is 14k gold worth?, and for silver bars in how much is a silver bar worth?

What you will actually pay and get

• The melt value is not the shop price. Dealers sell above it and buy back below it, and the gap is wider, per ounce, on small bars. Ask for both quotes on the same bar before you buy: the difference is what a round trip costs you.
• Check the weight unit. Prices are per troy ounce. A listing in “ounces” without “troy”, or a scale reading, can hide a difference of about 9%.
• Size the purchase for the bad day. On the table above, a 1 kg bar moved $4,210 or more on 1 day in 20 over the last year. If that would worry you, a smaller bar or a smaller amount fits better.
• Count the tax. The IRS treats gold bullion as a collectible: a gain on bullion held for more than a year is taxed at up to 28%.
• Trading gold is not owning a bar. On MetaTrader the symbol XAUUSD tracks the gold price without any metal changing hands; a contract size sets how many ounces one lot moves, and the gold pip value calculator turns that into dollars per move.

This page is a measurement, not a forecast or personal advice.

How we measured it

Price: the LBMA Gold Price PM, the London afternoon benchmark in US dollars, every fix from August 1971 to 29 September 2026. On 5 October 2026 the LBMA price feed refused our scripted request, so the latest fix here is 29 September 2026, not today; the calculator takes any price you enter. Units: 1 troy ounce = 31.1034768 g and 1 pound = 453.59237 g, the exact values in NIST Handbook 44. Bar standard: the LBMA Good Delivery Rules. A “day” is the change from one afternoon fix to the next, so a Monday move includes the weekend. Bar values are for the gold content only, without dealer premiums, storage or tax.

Common questions