Dealer premium tracking starts with a clean audit trail.

The dealer tracker is designed to answer one simple question: what are major dealers charging above spot for the same common bullion products at the same capture time?

The model now covers 5 dealers, 4 standardized products, and 20 audit slots. It is ready for the first manual capture, but it does not publish premium figures until source evidence exists.

Standardized products

Initial audit queue

No premium is published until the source URL, timestamp, screenshot, dealer price, payment method, and spot reference are archived. Rows below are audit slots, not rankings.

Data fields required before a premium goes live

• sourceId
• dealer
• productLabel
• metal
• troyOunces
• paymentMethod
• captureStatus
• capturedAt
• dealerPriceUsd
• spotPriceUsdPerOz
• shippingUsd
• stockStatus
• sourceUrl
• archivePath
• screenshotPath
• premiumUsd
• premiumPct
• effectivePricePerOzUsd

Manual capture workflow

1. Create a dated audit folder with node scripts/create-premium-audit.mjs YYYY-MM-DD.
2. Capture the spot-price reference first, including timestamp, source URL, screenshot, and archive path.
3. Capture each dealer/product row in the same window using the cash/check baseline unless a dealer does not publish it.
4. Store screenshots under research/premium-audits/YYYY-MM-DD/screenshots/ and raw captures under raw-captures/.
5. Only change a row from scheduled to captured after the source URL, timestamp, price, payment method, spot reference, screenshot, and archive path are present.
6. Review the CSV for missing evidence before any premium number appears on a public page.

Initial audit assumptions

• Same product category across dealers whenever possible.
• Cash/check baseline first; card, wire, and ACH prices separated if shown.
• Shipping thresholds and availability caveats recorded.
• Spot reference and capture timestamp recorded alongside every screenshot.
• No “best dealer” label until repeated captures show a durable pattern.