Investing or collecting Precious Metals is a hobby that comes with new verbiage, concepts, and terms. One such important term is the troy ounce. Precious Metals are weighed using the traditional troy weight system instead of the more familiar “avoirdupois” units, otherwise known as the kitchen ounce, used to measure goods such as sugar or coffee.
If you were to take a 1 oz coin from your collection, though, and place it on a standard grocery-store scale, you would find that your coin is 10% heavier than an ounce of sugar or coffee. As a worldwide standard, all Precious Metals (including those sold by APMEX) will be weighted and referred to in troy ounces.
It’s important to note that bullion products are only listed by the weight of the metal, excluding any other add-ons. For example, a one ounce gold bar in TEP refers only to the weight of the gold bar itself, as if the TEP packaging were not included. Storage solutions like these can be convenient, but make at-home measurements more difficult.
