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Editorial policy

By , Editor Last updated October 30, 2026

This page says where Lustre's numbers come from, how often they change, how the calculators work, how we handle mistakes and how we make money.

Where the metal prices come from

Spot prices for gold, silver, platinum and palladium come from one free market data feed, gold-api.com. A Cloudflare Worker (a scheduled job) asks the feed for the price and saves it. The price API that the pages use also reads the feed directly and reuses each reading for 30 seconds. Copper comes from the same feed. Nickel is a figure we set by hand and is not live.

Before a reading is used, it must pass two checks: it has to fall inside a wide sane range for that metal, and it cannot be more than 35% away from the last good reading. A reading that fails is thrown away and the last good price stays. If the feed is down, the page shows reference prices and says so.

Spot price is the market price of the metal. It is not what a dealer sells at or buys at. Those prices are higher and lower, and the gap is the premium over spot.

How often prices update

  • On your screen: while a page is open and visible, your browser asks for a new price about every 45 seconds. The price service reuses a reading for up to 30 seconds. So the price you see is usually under two minutes old.
  • In the page when it loads: the page is saved at the edge for up to 5 minutes, using the last price the scheduled job stored. That job stores a price every 15 minutes. The browser then switches to the newer live price within seconds. Search engines that do not run scripts see the stored price, which can be about 20 minutes old.
  • Price history: Lustre saves a reading every 15 minutes for the 24 hour, 1 week and 1 month charts, and a reading every minute for the 1 hour chart. Charts for 1 year and longer use monthly averages from the World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), CC BY 4.0, and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U for inflation.
  • Currency rates: European Central Bank daily reference rates.
  • Dealer prices: read from each dealer's own product page every few hours.

How the calculators work

Melt value is the weight of the item in grams, times its purity, divided by 31.1035 (grams in a troy ounce), times the spot price per troy ounce. A 14k item is 58.33% pure gold; sterling silver is 92.5%. Coin weights and metal content follow the U.S. Mint's published specifications.

The share a buyer pays is a Lustre editorial estimate, not a quote: jewelry and scrap 60% to 90% of melt, scrap silver 70% to 90%, junk silver coins 80% to 95%, well-known bullion 95% to 99% of spot. Real offers depend on the buyer and the day. The full method is on About Lustre.

Collector values for key dates come from the PCGS and NGC price guides, read by hand. Other grade values are labeled Lustre estimates.

How guides are written

Guides are edited by Randy Torres. Facts about taxes, coin specifications and consumer rules link to the source (for example the IRS, the U.S. Mint, the FTC). We write in plain words for someone new to the topic. Guides are general information, not advice. Lustre is not investment, tax or legal advice. Prices move and you can lose money buying metals or coins.

Corrections

If something is wrong, write to contact@lustremetals.com with the page and what you think is wrong. We check it against the source, fix it, and move the "Last updated" date on that page. We do not yet keep a public list of past corrections.

Affiliate links and how Lustre makes money

Lustre is free to use. Some outbound links go through a Lustre address that starts with /go/. That address records that a click happened (the page it came from, which partner and an anonymous visitor ID, with no name or email; clicks from browsers that send Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control are not recorded) and then sends you on to the partner.

Where a partner has an affiliate program that is switched on, the link carries our tracking code, and Lustre may earn a commission if you buy, at no extra cost to you. Right now the switched-on program is: eBay. For the other dealers in our comparison tables, the link goes straight to the dealer's own site and Lustre earns nothing.

Commissions do not change prices, premiums, ranges or the order of dealers. Dealer tables are sorted by the price we read. When this changes, this page changes.

Not investment advice

Lustre is not investment, tax or legal advice. Prices move and you can lose money buying metals or coins. For tax or retirement account questions, ask a qualified professional.