Spot price is determined by a trade between a buyer and seller, so clearly someone bought at the spot price in order for there to be a spot price.
Other than traders, the only other people I am aware of who pay spot price are retail customers.
If we are talking gold jewelry, then that is correct. But if we are talking gold/silver bullion, then almost all well established coin dealers pay over spot price everyday for certain items. For example, silver eagles bring roughly 1-1.50 over spot locally if they are in BU condition. Silver Maples, Silver Austrian Philharmonics, Engelhard prospectors, good condition silver dollars, etc, bring in over spot prices almost 100% of the time at my local coin stores. Gold Eagles bring over spot as do other US gold coins, decent condition raw old US gold etc do as well.
Some people who only have access to low paying coin stores/pawn shops/PM buyers might never get spot for what they sell to them, but it is not like that everywhere.
There is also a "bid" and "ask" price that dealers look at when buying and selling items, whether wholesale or retail. Look at a grey sheet price list sometime and you will see what I mean. Bid means what someone out there is offering to pay right now for something, and ask is the price someone is willing to sell right now for, roughly speaking. If you have a good relationship with a coin dealer, it is often possible to get them to sell you something at the "bid" price, since that is what they would presumably get if they sold it wholesale to another coin dealer. Dealers will buy from the public for under the "bid" price, since they have to make a profit when they in turn wholesale it, or they can make even more if they retail it in their store.
For example, right now the dealer bid price is roughly 2 bucks over spot for American Silver Eagles in tubes in BU condition. Dealers know if they have to buy from another dealer, they are going to pay more than when they buy from Joe Public. The local stores may pay 1 to 1.50 over spot from their customers, and when they resell to a wholesaler in the coin business, they can make 50 cents to 1 dollar per coin profit. This might now sound like much, but if they are buying hundreds of ounces at a time, it can add up fast. If the coin store has enough customers to buy their inventory (so the dealer rarely has to wholesale anything) they can make even more profit by selling to customers at retail prices, which is 3-3.50 over spot for silver eagles. So the coin store's profit is now 2 to 2.50 per ounce profit under this example.
Spot in bullion PMs is determined daily by the paper commodity markets (futures), it is also referred to as cash price in those markets (it is the delivery price for that time and date). On gold/silver bullion PMs, the bid and ask price dealers look at for anything are tied to the spot price, the only difference being a premium added, depending on rarity, supply and demand for that particular item, etc.
Jim
