How to Verify Your Holdings at the Texas Bullion Depository

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Log into the depositor portal for real-time holdings

The Texas Bullion Depository runs an online depositor portal at texasbulliondepository.gov. Every account holder has a login. Once you sign in, your current holdings appear in both troy ounces and grams for every product line: gold, silver, platinum, palladium.

The portal tracks the live market price of your assets and shows the current dollar value inside your account, per the depository's own Account Holders page. That means the value you see on screen is not a stale month-end snapshot. It reflects the market at the moment you open the page.

Access to the portal uses 256-bit encryption for data both in transit and at rest, per the depository's First in Class technology page. Your personal identifiers, account number, and access credentials are stored only in encrypted form. That is important because a portal login is your day-to-day audit of what the vault holds under your name.

If you cannot see your holdings after a recent deposit, check the account activity screen first. Deposits appear once the metal has been received, inspected, and accepted at the depository. That inspection step is where the photographic record we cover next is added.

Photographic verification for every deposit and withdrawal

The depository publishes on its First in Class page that its technology includes "photographic verification uploads of all deposits and withdrawals to and from depositor accounts". In practice, that means every time metal enters or leaves your account, an image record is attached to the transaction. You can review it inside the portal.

Combined with automated notifications of account events, this creates a documented trail. If a bar or coin ever appeared to be missing, misidentified, or wrongly credited, the photographic record is what you would use to reconcile against the paper receipt from your dealer or the shipping manifest from the custodian.

The record is not a substitute for the dealer invoice or the custodian statement, and it is not a legal audit opinion. It is the operator's own image-backed transaction log. Its value is that it lets you match physical items to portal entries without having to travel to Leander to inspect the vault yourself.

Segregated storage: the exact metal comes back

Segregated storage is the second half of your verification story. The depository's own FAQ states plainly that segregated storage means "the metals you submit for storage under your account are the exact same metals you will receive back when you make a withdrawal from your account". It also notes that pooled storage is planned for the future but is not currently offered.

For a serialized product like an LBMA gold bar, segregation is easy to verify: your portal record shows the specific serial number, and that same serial-numbered bar is what the depository is holding for you. For coins in tubes or sealed monster boxes, the identifier is at the lot level, not per coin, but the principle is the same: your metal is not mixed into a common pool.

The practical verification move here is to keep two references handy. Save your dealer invoice, which lists the bar or lot serial numbers shipped. Then match those numbers against the deposit entries in your portal. If any serial number does not line up, that is the moment to call the depository directly.

Step by step: verify your holdings this week

Verify your insurance coverage

Insurance is a separate verification step because coverage depends on values you declare. The depository states on its Insurance page that all assets are automatically covered for the metal content value once the deposit has been received, inspected, and accepted. The policy is placed on the Lloyd's of London insurance marketplace.

For a numismatic coin whose collectible premium sits well above the melt value, you should declare that higher value when you deposit it. The depository will then insure at the greater of the metal content value or your declared value. If you skip the declared value, the insurance follows the metal only, which may leave a large premium exposed.

Transit insurance is a different beast. Inbound shipments to the depository are your responsibility to insure with the dealer or custodian. Outbound shipments back to the account owner are covered by the depository up to the insured value. Verify both legs before a deposit or a withdrawal moves.

The four-layer oversight chain behind the depository

Beyond what you can see yourself in the portal, there are three institutional layers that verify the depository from the outside. This is what turns the vault from a private storage contract into a state-supervised program.

Layer one is the Depository Administrator, appointed by the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts under Chapter 2116 of the Texas Government Code. The current administrator is Macy Douglas. The depository's FAQ says the Administrator has "direct oversight and audit privileges regarding all Depository Account Holder accounts". That is a strong statement: it means the state's appointee can pull any account's records.

Layer two is an independent Texas-based accounting firm. The depository states that this firm audits the depository and submits reports to the Comptroller for review on a regular schedule. Those reports are the paper trail an outside CPA leaves on top of the operator's own books.

Layer three is the State of Texas itself. As a state agency, the depository is subject to state audits and to the Texas Government Code provisions that govern state agencies. The current Texas Comptroller (as of August 2026) is Don Huffines, per the comptroller.texas.gov agency page and the depository's own site header.

Verify the depository itself is real: the State of Texas paper trail

Every verification chain has a starting point. For the Texas Bullion Depository, the starting point is state law. House Bill 483 was signed by then-Governor Greg Abbott on June 12, 2015. The bill was filed by Representative Giovanni Capriglione. It created the first state-administered precious-metals bullion depository in the United States.

The depository opened for business on April 1, 2018 in Leander, Texas, on a purpose-built campus north of Austin. The facility is operated by Lone Star Tangible Assets LP, referred to on the site as LSTA. The state owns the program. LSTA is the state-selected operator.

You can independently confirm all of this. The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts publishes a Bullion Depository program page at comptroller.texas.gov, the depository's own site is at texasbulliondepository.gov, and HB 483 is on the Texas Legislature site. If any of those pages disagreed, that would be your signal to pause.

If your metal is in an IRA: verify through the custodian statement too

For IRA metal, the picture has one extra layer. The IRS requires that a bank or an IRS-approved nonbank trustee hold IRA assets. The depository operator LSTA received IRS nonbank trustee approval in 2023, and the documented IRA custodian path as of August 2026 runs through Equity Trust Company.

Practically, that means you have two portals to check, not one. The Equity Trust portal shows your IRA balance, your basis, and the metal held under the IRA. The Texas Bullion Depository portal shows the physical item counts and photographic records at the vault. Both should agree, item for item, ounce for ounce.

If they do not, the custodian statement is authoritative for the IRA. That is where any tax-reporting figure will come from. Any discrepancy between custodian and depository is one to open with the custodian first, because the custodian is the trust-law holder of the account.

Worked example: a Texas retiree confirming a $150,000 account

Verify your storage fees match what was quoted

Storage fees are a small but persistent line item, and they show up as a debit against your account. Verifying that the actual charge matches your quote is part of any honest verification routine. For a non-IRA account, the depository publishes tiered annual rates on its Pricing page. For IRA storage, the fee is typically negotiated among the custodian, the dealer, and the depository contractor, and may not match the published schedule.

The calculator below is a way to model what a small fee difference does to a retirement account over a full holding period. Enter the fee bundle your custodian and dealer quoted, run a scenario, and compare against the alternative. It is a cross-check tool, not a substitute for reading your quarterly statement.

The output is a projection, not a promise. Real-world fee patterns depend on account activity, wire fees, and any additional custodian charges. Verify the current-quarter debit against the quoted rate, and revisit annually.

When online verification alone is not enough

Portal verification is a strong first line, but a few honest situations call for more than a login:

• A large single deposit that has not posted after five business days. Deposits post on inspection and acceptance. A delay past that window is worth a call, not a wait.
• A custodian statement and a depository portal that disagree by more than a rounding difference. Escalate through the custodian first, then to the depository's whistleblower and ethics hotline at LSTA if needed.
• An unfamiliar authorized user or transaction. Automated notifications are your first alert. Change credentials and call the depository line immediately.
• A very high-premium numismatic coin without a declared value on file. The insurance will default to metal content coverage. Add the declared value before you assume you are covered.
• You are near required minimum distribution age. Verify with your IRA custodian that the correct fair-market-value figure is being reported for the year, since that is the number the IRS uses to size your RMD.

None of these are red flags against the depository. They are the routine gaps that any physical-metal storage arrangement has, and that a portal alone cannot close.

Frequently asked questions

By Harry's Coins Editorial. Last reviewed August 2026.