The short version: when you record a sale, the items you ticked don't get deleted — they move from HELD to SOLD status.
They drop out of your active holdings, your portfolio value, and your unrealized-gain math, but they stay in your records, linked to both the buy that brought them in and the sale that sent them out. You can still find them, export them, and see exactly how they performed.
This article covers what changes, what doesn't, and where to look for items that have moved into SOLD.
For the form-side walkthrough of the sale itself, see How to record a sale.
The status flip
Every inventory item in Gold Silver Ledger carries a status field. It has two possible values:
HELD: The item is in your possession and counts toward every "what do I own right now" figure in the app.
SOLD: The item has been disposed of via a sell transaction. It no longer counts toward current holdings, but it remains in your records.
Submitting a sale flips each ticked item from HELD to SOLD in a single step. There's no draft state, no soft-archive, no "pending" — the moment the sale is recorded, the items are SOLD.
Where sold items live on the Holdings page
The Holdings page has three tabs at the top that filter by status:
Held: Only items currently in your possession. This is the default tab and the one most users keep open most of the time. Sold items do not appear here.
Sold: Only items that have been disposed of. Each row shows what you paid, what you received, and the realized gain or loss. This is the tab to use when you want to review past sales by item.
All: Every item, regardless of status — held and sold side by side. Useful when you want to see your full history without flipping tabs, or when you're searching across both groups.
Switching tabs only changes what's filtered into view. Nothing about the underlying records moves; the tabs are just different windows onto the same inventory.
What stops counting once an item is sold
Once an item is in SOLD status, it's excluded from anything that asks "what do I own right now":
Portfolio value. The Total Portfolio Value figure on the Dashboard sums the current value of HELD items only.
Unrealized gains and losses. Unrealized G/L is a "if you sold today" calculation by definition, and it only runs on items you still hold. SOLD items have no unrealized number — their gain or loss is already realized.
Allocation by metal. The pie chart and any "% gold / % silver" breakdowns are based on the current value of HELD items.
Top Holdings cards. The "largest positions" surface on the Dashboard reflects HELD items only.
Performance charts on Analytics that show "current portfolio value over time" use the HELD set.
The exclusion is the right behavior — a coin you sold last year shouldn't make today's portfolio look bigger than it is — but it's worth being explicit about, because it explains why a sale sometimes makes your Dashboard total drop more than the realized proceeds replaced.
What sold items keep
A SOLD item isn't a stripped-down record. It carries everything the held version did, plus a few new fields from the sale:
The original purchase information: Buy date, purchase price, recorded spot, premium paid, dealer, allocated shipping. All preserved exactly as they were before the sale.
The original cost basis: The number that fed into the realized gain or loss calculation. Unchanged after the sale.
A link to the sell transaction: Each sold item points to the sale that disposed of it, so you can navigate from the item to the sale that ended its time in your inventory.
The sale date, sale price, and realized gain or loss: New fields populated by the sale, all visible on the Sold tab.
The holding period: Calculated from buy date to sale date, used to categorize the sale as short-term or long-term in the Annual Report.
Any labels you'd attached to the item — nickname, user reference, mint-year annotation — also persist. If you nicknamed an Eagle "Grandma's Eagle" and later sold it, the nickname still appears on the SOLD record. (Whether that's a happy or melancholy choice is up to you.)
Where sold items still show up
A SOLD item drops out of "current holdings" surfaces but stays present everywhere a record of the disposal is useful:
The Sold tab on Holdings, as covered above.
The All tab on Holdings, alongside your held items.
The Transactions History page lists the sell transaction itself, and expanding it shows every item disposed of, with cost basis and sale price per line.
The original buy transaction still appears in History, with the affected items now flagged SOLD inside its expanded view. The buy isn't restated; it just shows which of the items it created have since left your inventory.
The Analytics page picks up the realized gain or loss in its performance breakdown for the relevant period.
The Annual Report (Premium) autofills the sale into the right tax year, with short-term or long-term treatment based on each item's individual holding period. See [Generating your Annual Report (Premium)].
CSV exports include sold items when you export from the All or Sold tabs. The export carries the full record — buy data, sale data, realized G/L.
The general principle: a sold item is historical rather than current. Anywhere in the app that asks a "right now" question excludes it; anywhere that asks a "what's happened" question includes it.
A concrete example
Say your Holdings page is showing 47 items in the Held tab. You record a sale of three of them. After submitting:
The Held tab now shows 44 items. The three you sold are no longer in the count.
The Sold tab now shows three items. Each row displays the cost basis, the sale price, and the realized gain or loss.
The All tab shows 47 items — the same total as before, just with three of them in SOLD status.
The Dashboard Total Portfolio Value drops by the current value of the three sold items, replaced by the cash proceeds that now sit outside the app entirely. (Gold Silver Ledger tracks bullion, not the bank account the proceeds landed in.)
The Analytics page registers the realized gain or loss for the period the sale falls in.
The Annual Report, if you're on Premium, has new entries in the relevant tax year.
The buy transaction that originally brought those three items into your inventory is still in the History page exactly as it was, with the three sold items now flagged SOLD inside its expanded view.
Reversing a sale
If you recorded a sale by mistake, deleting the sell transaction reverses everything. The items linked to that sale flip back from SOLD to HELD, the realized gain or loss disappears from analytics, and the items reappear on the Held tab as if the sale never happened.
Cost basis and purchase date are preserved throughout — the items are restored exactly as they were before the sale.
Where to go next
How to record a sale: The form-side walkthrough for recording a sale.
The Holdings page: grouped, item, and card views: The longer version of how the Held / Sold / All tabs interact with the layout views.
Generating your Annual Report: Where realized gains end up at tax time.
Deleting a sell transaction: Reversing a sale and restoring items to HELD.
Exporting your holdings as CSV: Including sold items in the export.