Coin and Bullion Auctions at Iran's Exchange Center: How the Price Is Discovered and What Happens to the Premium

What you will learn in this lesson

"Auction" is one of the most repeated words in Iranian gold and currency news, yet what actually happens inside an auction session is rarely explained. In this lesson you will learn what the Iran Currency and Gold Exchange Center is, how a coin or gold bullion auction session runs step by step, where an auction differs from a pre-sale, why the Center's currency side is not an auction at all, and by what route official supply acts on the coin premium. The numerical example in this lesson is hypothetical and labelled as such.

Definitions

• Iran Currency and Gold Exchange Center (مرکز مبادله ارز و طلای ایران): an institution established by decision of the Central Bank's Money and Credit Council, which began official operations in Esfand 1401 (February 2023). Its work centres on two things: currency transactions (banknotes and transfers) and precious metals (bullion and coins).
• Auction (حراج): a selling method in which the final price emerges from competition among buyers' orders rather than from an announced rate. The seller offers a set quantity and buyers place orders.
• Pre-sale (پیش‌فروش): a sale at an announced price with delivery at a future maturity. Here the price is not discovered, it is announced.
• Margin deposit (وجه‌الضمان): the sum an applicant pays in before the session in order to be allowed to place an order, a guarantee that the order is serious.
• Allocation (تخصیص): the stage at which the offered quantity is divided among the winning orders.
• Trading hall (تالار): the separated segments of the Exchange Center's currency market, each with its own rate.
• Coin premium (حباب سکه): the gap between a coin's market price and the intrinsic value of the gold inside it. If this concept is new to you, the lesson What Is the Coin Premium (Hobab) and How Is It Calculated? builds it step by step.

An auction session, step by step

1. The session notice. Before every auction the Center publishes an announcement: what is offered, how much, the order window, and the payment deadline. The session's numerical terms (each applicant's purchase ceiling, the amount to be deposited) appear in that same notice and change from one session to the next. Your reference is the notice for that session, not your memory of the previous one.
2. Registration and identity verification. The applicant verifies their identity once in the Center's gold trading system and completes their account details, including the bank branch from which the coin will be collected. This step is not repeated for later sessions.
3. Payment. Within the announced window the applicant transfers the money. Without it, no order is registered.
4. Order placement. Once the session is live, the applicant registers an order within the specified time window. This is where the price is discovered: the stronger the competition among orders, the higher the resulting price.
5. Allocation. The offered quantity is divided among the orders. Applicants who did not succeed have their money returned.
6. Delivery. The buyer collects at their chosen branch with an identity card and a tracking code.

The most important difference between an auction and a pre-sale lies in that last step, not in the price: in an auction the coin is delivered from seven working days after allocation, whereas a pre-sale carries deferred delivery with a future maturity set for it (spokesperson of the Iran Exchange Center, 3 Shahrivar 1404, 25 August 2025).

Currency at the Exchange Center is not an auction

This is where many people go wrong. Coins and gold bullion at the Exchange Center are sold through auctions, but currency at the same Center is not traded through an auction; its currency market has halls in which exporters and importers reach agreement on a rate. That is why the rates there are called "negotiated rates". The first hall and second hall rates are announced daily, and the rate for banknote currencies is the second hall rate of the commercial currency market (spokesperson of the Iran Exchange Center, Azar 1404, December 2025). So when you read about a "gap between rates", what is meant is the distance between these negotiated rates and the open market rate, not the outcome of a currency auction.

A worked example (hypothetical)

Suppose a coin's intrinsic value, meaning the gold inside it, works out to 150 million tomans, and the coin trades in the market at 160 million tomans. The premium is 10 million tomans, about 6.3 percent of the coin's price.

Now suppose the Exchange Center holds several auction sessions in a row and a large share of the buyers who had been queuing in the open market take their coin from the auction instead. Pent up demand in the open market eases and the coin's market price comes to 155 million tomans, while the global ounce and the dollar have not moved and intrinsic value has stayed at 150 million tomans. The premium is now 5 million tomans, about 3.2 percent.

Note the two numbers in this hypothetical example: the coin's price fell only about 3 percent, but the premium halved. That is precisely what an auction does; it has no bearing on the coin's intrinsic value, because the global ounce and the dollar rate build that, and it attacks only the extra layer built out of short supply and a queue of demand. If the ounce or the dollar rises, the coin's price rises too, even in a week with several auctions. We built the chain behind that intrinsic value in the previous lesson, Pricing Gold in Iran.

The limit of the tool follows from the same logic: the effect of an auction depends on the size of the supply. If the amount offered is small against accumulated demand, the queue forms again and the premium returns.

In Iran's market

The Central Bank's coin auction began at the Exchange Center in Esfand 1402 (March 2024) and is held remotely. As of 3 Shahrivar 1404 (25 August 2025), 82 auction sessions had been held and a total of 943,727 full, half and quarter gold coins had been allocated and delivered through selected branches of Bank Melli across the country. The pre-sale scheme began in Bahman 1403 (January 2025) and by the same date 761,207 coins had been pre-sold.

The gold bullion auction has a separate mechanism and is held in the Center's trading hall. What is offered is a standard one kilogram bar of 995 fineness, and the sessions are numbered; for example, the 152nd gold bullion auction was announced for Tuesday 6 Mordad 1405 (28 July 2026) from 14:00 to 17:00, with the margin deposit deadline falling on the day before the session.

Do not miss one key distinction: the coin auction is designed for individuals, and any Iranian who completes identity verification may place an order in it, whereas the gold bullion auction is the arena of licensed members of the gold trade, meaning bullion wholesalers, manufacturers of gold products and gold retailers. If you are a household buyer, the coin auction is your route, not the bullion auction.

Every auction session has an announced date, and its result (the amount offered, the amount sold and the average price) is published after the session. Follow the dates of upcoming sessions in the Sahmino events calendar and check the day's coin market price on the coin price page, so you can compare an auction's outcome with the market.

Common mistakes

• "An auction means cheap." In everyday Persian the word carries a sense of "discount", but a financial auction means competition. When demand is strong, the price coming out of an auction can land above expectations and close to the market.
• Confusing an auction with a pre-sale. These are two separate instruments and their main difference is delivery timing, not being cheap or expensive.
• "A smaller premium means a cheaper coin." Not necessarily. The premium is a gap, not a price. If intrinsic value rises, the premium can shrink while the coin's price has gone up.
• "The Exchange Center auctions currency too." The currency side works through halls and negotiated rates, not through auctions.
• Relying on the previous session's terms. The purchase ceiling, the amount to be deposited and the time window are set in each session's notice and are not fixed.

Summary

The Exchange Center gathers two different mechanisms under one roof: gold and coins through auctions, meaning price discovery from competing orders, and currency through halls and negotiated rates. An auction is a tool for injecting official supply and shortening the queue of demand; that is why its leverage lands on the coin premium and not on intrinsic value. Every time you read news of an auction, ask three things: how much was offered, at what price it sold, and what the premium did the next day.

In the previous lesson, Pricing Gold in Iran, we saw where the number on your invoice comes from; this lesson showed at which point the policymaker reaches into that chain.