Purchase limits have tightened on Costco gold bars as popularity boomed

Mike Snider, USA TODAY

Thu, May 15, 2025, 2:13 PM 2 min read

Gold has go specified a blistery commodity that Costco is seemingly limiting however overmuch its members tin buy.

The warehouse retailer began selling 24-karat golden bars to its members successful 2023, with a bounds of 2 bars per person. Now, that bounds has changed to 1 per transaction and a maximum of 2 bars per 24 hours, erstwhile you look connected the retailer website.

The terms tag for a 1-ounce South African-made golden bar? $3,279.99, overmuch higher than the $2,000 they were going for 19 months ago, soon aft Costco began selling them. However, that terms summation is understandable arsenic golden prices person risen much than 70% implicit that clip – hitting record highs successful April.

Noodles & Company: Could shutter up to 21 locations successful 2025

Another listing, for the 1-ounce Gold Bar PAMP Suisse Lady Fortuna Veriscan, limits members to 1 point per transaction and a maximum of 2 items per 24 hours, down from a bounds of five items per 24 hours successful January. The aforesaid merchandise had a headdress of two purchases per rank successful September 2023, according to an archived snapshot of the listing.

The retailer besides has limits connected different precious metals including:

• 1-ounce American Eagle golden coin ($3,329.99; 1 per transaction and 2 per 24 hours)

• 10-ounce metallic barroom ($359.99; 1 per transaction and 10 per 24 hours)

One enactment without a bounds is the smaller 5-gram golden barroom connected an 18-karat golden chain, priced astatine $1,149.99.

Costco did not respond to a petition for remark from USA TODAY.

The gold bars perpetually sold out erstwhile they were archetypal disposable online successful 2023. "When we load them connected the site, they’re typically gone wrong a fewer hours, and we bounds 2 per member,” Costco's then-chief fiscal serviceman Richard Galanti told analysts during the company's net telephone successful September 2023, according to a transcript from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Sales of golden and different categories including jewelry were up treble digits successful the 24-week play ending Feb. 16, main fiscal serviceman Gary Millerchip said. The retailer besides began selling metallic Canadian coins successful March 2024.

Costco could beryllium making $100 cardinal to $200 cardinal a month by selling golden bars, Wells Fargo Equity Research estimated successful April 2024.

If golden prices stay precocious – prices roseate much than 1% connected Thursday, May 15 – and economic uncertainty continues, the bars could stay fashionable purchases.

"You cognize things are getting weird erstwhile your ma starts eyeing golden bars astatine Costco similar it’s toilet insubstantial successful 2020," one societal media idiosyncratic quipped.

Contributing: Fernando Cervantes Jr., Mary Walrath-Holdridge and Anthony Robledo, USA TODAY.