The IRS has a purity standard for gold in an IRA. Ninety-nine point five percent.
The most popular IRA-eligible gold coin in America is 91.67 percent pure.
Both of those sentences are true, which tells you most of what you need to know about how this list was assembled.
It was not written by someone applying a principle. It was written by Congress, in pieces, across a decade, naming specific coins by name and then later adding a general standard on top.
The result is a list where a coin can qualify at 91.67 percent purity while a nearly identical foreign coin at the same purity does not.
So here is every gold coin your IRA can hold, why each one made the cut, and roughly what it costs over spot. Plus the ones that get pitched hardest and are not eligible at all.