Costco is renowned for its bargains, from super-cheap maple syrup to 72-pound cheese wheels and eight-foot teddy bears—but now, the wholesaler is offering an unusually high-end item to its members: gold bars.
The company is selling two options, both priced at just under $2,000, online: a one-ounce gold bar from Rand Refinery, and one-ounce bars from PAMP Suisse—but they’re only available to Costco members, and they've been so sought after that the firm has been forced to limit how many customers can buy.
Costco memberships start at $60 a year.
Gold's appeal
According to Costco’s website, the PAMP Suisse bars are 24-carat gold, with the retail giant touting the Swiss-made item’s “proof-like finish.”
“Each bar is individually controlled, registered, and secured within protective CertiPAMP™ packaging with an official Assay Certificate and a digital certificate accessed with a QR Code. Each assay card is covered with a thin removable protective film,” the company says.
Only two bars, which are nonrefundable, can be purchased under a single membership.
Spot gold—usually used by investors as a hedge against geopolitical and economic turbulence—was trading at around $1,875 an ounce on Thursday morning; the price of the precious metal has experienced volatility throughout the course of this year.
With the addition of the bars to its item range, Costco appears to have unwittingly sparked a gold rush, with customers clearing the shelves of the bars in inventory and complaining online that they’re struggling to get their hands on them.
In an earnings call on Tuesday, Costco’s chief financial officer Richard Galanti said the gold bars were selling out within hours of becoming available—prompting caps on how many customers could buy.
“I’ve gotten a couple of calls that people have seen online that we’ve been selling one-ounce gold bars,” he said. “Yes, but when we load them on the site, they’re typically gone within a few hours, and we limit two per member.”
A spokesperson for Costco was not immediately available when contacted by Fortune.
Social media complaints
Would-be buyers have been taking to Reddit in recent months to lament their inability to secure one of Costco’s highly coveted gold bars.
“Saw it first time last night while on bed and missed it by the time I woke up in morning and started checkout process,” one Redditer commented on a forum about the bars. “A true you snooze, you lose.”
In a recent TikTok video, one woman recounted the story of how she wound up “hoarding” Costco’s gold bars.
@midlifecrisisgirl #CapCut heres the unboxing of the solid gold bars i implusively bought at Costco. #costcofinds #costcojewelry #unboxing ♬ original sound - Angel is in midlife crisis
“I was researching does Costco have any new gold [jewelry]…so I type in gold on the website and it brought up gold bars,” she said, as she held up two Rand Refinery bars she “impulsively” purchased for almost $4,000.
According to some social media users, gold bars are also available at some Costco locations in Asia.
One TikToker took to the video-sharing platform to show the bars on display at a Costco store in Korea, where they appeared to be on sale at upwards of $2,100. Fortune was not able to independently verify the contents of the video.
@skimcheese Gold bars and Gucci at Costco in Seoul 🤑🤑 #costco #seoul #southkorea #gucci #luxury #koreanskincare ♬ Permission to Dance - BTS
