LBMA Good Delivery List

• The Bottom Line: The LBMA Good Delivery List is the global “who's who” of trusted gold and silver refiners, ensuring the bullion you buy is genuine, high-quality, and easily tradable, forming the foundation of a safe investment in physical precious metals.
• Key Takeaways:
• What it is: A rigorously vetted and continuously monitored list of refiners whose large gold and silver bars meet the London Bullion Market Association's strict standards for quality, integrity, and responsible sourcing.
• Why it matters: It provides the ultimate margin_of_safety for physical bullion investors by guaranteeing a bar's weight, purity, and origin, making it a globally accepted and highly liquid asset.
• How to use it: By exclusively purchasing bullion products from refiners on this list, you eliminate the single greatest risk in physical metals—counterfeit or impure products—and ensure your investment retains its full intrinsic_value.

Imagine you're buying a diamond. You wouldn't just buy a shiny rock from a stranger in a back alley. You'd insist on seeing a certificate from a trusted gemological lab, like the GIA, that guarantees its carat, color, clarity, and cut. This certificate transforms a mere stone into a universally recognized and valued asset. The LBMA Good Delivery List is the GIA certificate for the world's most important gold and silver bars. It’s not just a list; it’s the bedrock of the entire global professional bullion market. The London Bullion Market Association (LBMA), the central authority for the London gold market, maintains this exclusive list of gold and silver refiners who have passed an incredibly demanding and continuous audit. To get on this list, a refiner must prove that its large, wholesale bars (the kind you see in movies, typically 400 troy ounces for gold and 1,000 for silver) meet exacting standards for:

• Purity: A minimum of 99.5% for gold and 99.9% for silver.
• Weight and Dimensions: Precise and consistent measurements.
• Markings: Clear, stamped information showing the refiner's mark, purity, and year of production.
• Financial Stability: The refiner must be a financially sound and established business.
• Responsible Sourcing: The refiner must have audited procedures to combat money laundering, terrorist financing, and human rights abuses in their supply chain. ¹⁾

When a refiner is on the Good Delivery List, their large bars are considered “good delivery,” which means they are fungible and accepted without question for settlement on major exchanges and by central banks worldwide. A 400-ounce gold bar from an approved refiner in Switzerland is, for all intents and purposes, identical to one from a listed refiner in Canada. This global interchangeability is what makes the professional gold market work. For an individual investor buying smaller bars or coins, this list is your ultimate seal of quality. While you're not buying a 400-ounce bar, purchasing a 1-ounce coin or a 10-ounce bar from a refiner on this list—like PAMP Suisse, Valcambi, or the Royal Canadian Mint—means you are buying a product backed by that same institutional-grade reputation for quality and integrity. It's your guarantee that the metal in your hand is exactly what it claims to be.

“Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing.” - Warren Buffett

In the world of physical precious metals, relying on the LBMA Good Delivery List is the first and most important step in knowing exactly what you're doing.

A value investor's primary concerns are the preservation of capital, understanding the true worth of an asset, and always operating with a margin_of_safety. While precious metals can be a subject of fierce debate in value investing circles, for those who choose to include them in their asset_allocation, the LBMA Good Delivery List is not just a helpful resource—it is an indispensable tool that aligns perfectly with these core principles. 1. The Ultimate Margin of Safety in a Tangible Asset Benjamin Graham taught that the margin of safety is the “central concept of investment.” It’s the buffer between the price you pay and the asset's underlying worth. When buying a physical asset like gold, the most catastrophic error is to misjudge its underlying worth because it's fake, impure, or from an untrustworthy source. The LBMA list provides an ironclad margin of safety against this fundamental risk. By insisting on products from an accredited refiner, you eliminate the possibility of a permanent loss of capital due to fraud. The small premium you might pay for a bar from a listed refiner over a “too-good-to-be-true” offer is not an expense; it is the price you pay for your margin of safety. It's the cheapest insurance you will ever buy. 2. Preserving Intrinsic Value The intrinsic_value of a gold bar is simple: its weight multiplied by its purity. A 10-ounce bar of 99.99% pure gold has a clear, calculable value based on the global spot price. However, a 10-ounce bar of unknown origin or purity has an intrinsic value of zero until it is professionally assayed. The process of drilling, melting, and testing the bar is costly and physically damages the product, reducing its final worth. The stamp of an LBMA-accredited refiner acts as a global certification of that intrinsic value. It allows the asset to trade based on its metallic content, not on a story or a promise. A value investor only deals in verifiable facts, and the LBMA list is the ultimate fact-checker for bullion. 3. Ensuring Liquidity and Avoiding Speculation Value investors are not speculators. They buy assets they understand and can be reasonably sure of selling at a fair price in the future. The fungibility conferred by the Good Delivery system creates a deep and liquid global market. You can sell a Valcambi gold bar to a dealer in London, Tokyo, or New York with equal ease and receive a price extremely close to the spot market. Attempting to sell a non-accredited bar is a speculative nightmare. You will face high assay fees, deep discounts, and outright refusal from most reputable dealers. By sticking to the list, you ensure your investment remains a liquid store of value, not an expensive, illiquid collectible. 4. Operating Within Your Circle of Competence Warren Buffett advises investors to stay within their circle_of_competence. For anyone new to precious metals, that circle must begin with understanding how to verify authenticity and quality. The LBMA Good Delivery List is the cornerstone of this competence. Before you can have an opinion on the future price of gold, you must first be able to guarantee that what you own is gold. Ignoring the list is like trying to analyze a company's financial statements without first ensuring they've been audited by a reputable firm. It's a foundational error.

Applying the principle of the LBMA Good Delivery List to your investment process is straightforward and methodical. It's a checklist for risk elimination.

1. Step 1: Always Verify the Refiner. Before purchasing any bullion product—whether it's a large bar, a small coin, or a gram-sized piece for a gift—your first question must be, “Who made this?” Take that refiner's name and check it against the official, current LBMA lists.
   • `Gold Current List:` Official LBMA Gold Good Delivery List
   • `Silver Current List:` Official LBMA Silver Good Delivery List
   • Pro Tip: Bookmark these links. A reputable dealer will always proudly state the refiner of their products. If they are evasive or you can't find the name on the list, walk away.
2. Step 2: Understand the Markings. Familiarize yourself with the markings on a typical bullion product from an accredited refiner. You should clearly see:
   • The refiner's official logo or name (e.g., PAMP Suisse, Argor-Heraeus).
   • The weight (e.g., 1 oz, 100 g).
   • The purity (e.g., 999.9 or 99.99 for gold).
   • Often, a unique serial number for tracking.
   • These marks are the refiner's promise to the world, backed by their LBMA accreditation.
3. Step 3: Buy from Reputable Dealers with a Clear Chain of Custody. Buying a genuine product through a questionable channel reintroduces risk. A reputable bullion dealer maintains a secure chain of custody, receiving products directly from refiners or trusted distributors. They have testing equipment (like X-ray spectrometers) to verify products they buy back from the public. Your goal is to buy an asset that has never left this secure ecosystem.
4. Step 4: Know the Difference Between “Accredited Refiner” and “Good Delivery Bar”. This is a subtle but important distinction. The “Good Delivery” standard technically applies to the large, 400-ounce institutional bars. When you buy a 1-ounce bar, it is not, by definition, a “Good Delivery bar.” However, what matters is that the refiner who made it is on the Good Delivery list. Their reputation and quality control standards extend across their entire product line. You are buying the refiner's integrity, which is what the list certifies.

Let's consider two investors, Prudent Penny and Speculative Sam, who both decide to allocate $20,000 to physical gold as a long-term hedge against inflation. Investor 1: Prudent Penny (The Value Investor) Penny's first step is research. She learns about the risks of counterfeit bullion and discovers the importance of the LBMA Good Delivery List. She identifies several refiners on the list, such as the Royal Canadian Mint and PAMP Suisse. She then finds a well-established, national bullion dealer with thousands of positive reviews and a transparent pricing structure. She decides to buy ten 1-ounce gold bars from PAMP Suisse. The price is about 4% over the global spot price of gold. She understands this premium covers the cost of manufacturing, assaying, insuring, and distributing the bars, and most importantly, it's the cost of guaranteed authenticity. The bars arrive sealed in certified packaging with visible serial numbers. Penny stores them securely, confident that she owns a liquid, verifiable asset whose value is directly tied to the price of gold. Investor 2: Speculative Sam (The “Deal” Hunter) Sam scoffs at paying a premium. “Gold is gold,” he says. He searches online auction sites and finds a seller offering 1-ounce gold bars from an unknown “Global Quick-Refine Co.” at just 1% over the spot price. The seller has a handful of positive, but vague, reviews. Sam thinks he's a genius for saving 3% compared to Penny. The bars arrive and they look fine to the naked eye. Five years later, both Penny and Sam decide to sell.

• Penny's Experience: She takes her PAMP Suisse bars to a local coin shop. The dealer instantly recognizes the brand, checks the security features on the packaging, and offers her 99% of the current spot price on the spot. The entire transaction takes 15 minutes. Her initial 4% premium “cost” allowed her to sell instantly at a fair market price.
• Sam's Experience: He takes his “Global Quick-Refine” bars to the same shop. The dealer looks at them and says, “I've never heard of this refiner. I can't buy these without sending them to be melted and assayed.” The dealer explains the assay process will cost $150 per bar and will take two weeks. Furthermore, because of the risk and hassle, his final offer will be at a 5% discount to the spot price after the fees. Sam's search for a 3% discount has resulted in a real loss of over 10% and a massive headache. Even worse, if the assay had revealed the bars were tungsten-plated fakes, his entire $20,000 investment would have been worthless.

The Lesson: The premium paid for a product from an LBMA-accredited refiner is not a cost to be avoided, but an investment in certainty, liquidity, and security—the very essence of a value-based approach.

• Global Fungibility & Trust: A bar from a listed refiner is accepted as genuine by central banks, exchanges, and dealers worldwide. It is the universal language of trust in precious metals.
• Unmatched Quality Assurance: The LBMA's rigorous and ongoing vetting process for purity, weight, responsible sourcing, and financial stability eliminates guesswork and ensures product integrity.
• Maximum Liquidity: This universal trust leads to maximum liquidity. Products from listed refiners can be bought and sold quickly with very tight bid-ask spreads, ensuring you get a fair market price when you need to sell.
• Bedrock for Risk_Management: For a physical asset, the list is the single most powerful tool for mitigating counterparty and quality risk, preventing the permanent loss of capital from fraud.

• Not a Direct Standard for Retail Products: The “Good Delivery” standard technically applies only to large wholesale bars. Investors must be careful to understand they are buying smaller products from a Good Delivery refiner, not an actual “Good Delivery bar.” This distinction can be confusing for beginners.
• The “Safety Premium”: Products from accredited refiners rightly command a higher premium. Novice investors can mistakenly see this as an unnecessary expense, luring them toward cheaper, high-risk alternatives, as demonstrated by Speculative Sam.
• Doesn't Guarantee Price Appreciation: The list is a guarantee of quality, not price. Owning a genuine gold bar doesn't mean its price will go up. The investment case for gold is separate from the authentication process. It is a tool for risk management, not a crystal ball for market_timing.
• Chain of Custody Still Matters: Even a genuine bar from an accredited refiner can lose its immediate fungibility if it leaves the secure professional circuit (e.g., stored in a home safe). When selling it back to a dealer, they will likely need to perform tests to ensure it hasn't been tampered with, which may involve a slight delay or cost.

• margin_of_safety
• intrinsic_value
• circle_of_competence
• risk_management
• asset_allocation
• inflation_hedge
• fungibility