What does LBMA Good Delivery mean, and does it matter when you buy or sell a bar?

Big Bullion · Published 23 October 2026 · Updated 23 October 2026 · 4 min read

Reviewed by the Big Bullion team, 23 October 2026

The LBMA keeps a list of refiners whose gold and silver it trusts. A bar from one of them is easy to resell because the next buyer does not have to doubt it. Every bar we sell is LBMA-refined, and for a bar from any other refiner we look for a matching line on our buy-in list. Send us a photo first.

What LBMA Good Delivery means

LBMA stands for the London Bullion Market Association. It keeps two lists, one for gold and one for silver, of refiners whose metal meets its standards for purity, marking and quality. This is the Good Delivery List. A refiner is on it because the LBMA has checked the refiner, not because the refiner says so.

The large bars traded between banks are the ones the list was built around. The smaller bars you buy for yourself, such as 10 g, 100 g or 1 kg, are not Good Delivery bars in that technical sense. They are made by the same refiners and carry the refiner's mark. That is what people mean when they call a small bar LBMA-refined.

Why it matters when you sell

A bar is only as easy to sell as the next buyer's trust in it. When the refiner is a well-known name, the buyer does not need to wonder whether the metal is what the stamp says. That means a quicker check, fewer questions and a fairer price.

A bar from a refiner nobody has heard of is not fake. It simply costs the next buyer more effort to be sure, and some will test it or turn it down. That is the whole difference. It is a difference in how easily you can sell, not in what the metal is worth.

How to check a bar yourself

1. Read the stamp. A real bar shows the refiner's mark, the weight, the purity (for example 999.9) and usually a serial number.
2. Open the LBMA list for the metal and look for the refiner's name. The gold and silver lists are linked below.
3. Check that the weight, purity and any serial number on the bar match the card or case it came in.
4. If anything does not match, or you cannot find the refiner, send us a clear photo of both sides and of any card. We will tell you what we see.

The LBMA's current list of Good Delivery gold refiners is the place to look a gold refiner up. Read 23 October 2026.

The LBMA's current list of Good Delivery silver refiners does the same for silver. Read 23 October 2026.

What we sell

Every bar we sell is LBMA-refined. Bars are also treated as investment precious metals in Singapore, so they are exempt from GST. Our refiner comparison page goes through the names you will see on our list.

What we do with a bar that is not LBMA

Send us a photo first. We price it against a matching line on our buy-in list, and we confirm at the counter whether we have one for your bar. Our upgrade page under Sell has the steps if you want to swap it for an LBMA-refined bar.

We sell physical gold and silver. Nothing on this page is financial advice.