Gold Price History

Two centuries of the U.S. gold price

For most of American history the government fixed the dollar price of gold, first at about $20.67 per troy ounce and from 1934 at $35. The free-market gold price that you see charted today only dates from the 1970s.

The fixed-price era, 1834 to 1933

Congress defined the dollar as a weight of gold. After the Coinage Act of 1837, a dollar equaled 23.22 grains of fine gold, which works out to about $20.67 per troy ounce. That price held for roughly a century. The Gold Standard Act of 1900 formally made gold the sole standard for the dollar.

1933 and 1934: confiscation and devaluation

In the depths of the Depression, Executive Order 6102 of April 5, 1933 required Americans to turn in most gold coins, bullion and gold certificates to the Federal Reserve, with exceptions for jewelry, small amounts and rare coins. The Gold Reserve Act of January 1934 moved the nation’s gold to the Treasury, and President Roosevelt then set the new official price at $35 per ounce. The dollar was devalued by about 41% against gold overnight.

Bretton Woods and the London Gold Pool

After 1944, the Bretton Woods system pegged other currencies to the dollar and let foreign governments convert dollars into gold at $35. To hold the market price near that level, the United States and several European central banks pooled their gold sales in London from 1961. The London Gold Pool collapsed in March 1968, leaving a two-tier system: $35 between governments, a floating price for everyone else.

1971 to 1974: the gold window closes

On August 15, 1971, President Nixon suspended the dollar’s convertibility into gold, closing the “gold window.” The official price was raised to $38 and then to $42.22, but it no longer described any real market. On December 31, 1974, Americans could again legally buy, sell and hold gold bullion.

1980 to 1999: the peak and the long slide

Double-digit inflation, the Iranian hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan drove gold to a London fix of $850 on January 21, 1980. High interest rates under Fed Chairman Paul Volcker then brought inflation down, and gold spent most of the next two decades in decline. By the late 1990s it traded below $300, with European central banks selling reserves; the Washington Agreement of September 1999 capped those sales.

2000 to the 2020s

Gold passed $1,000 an ounce in March 2008 during the financial crisis and climbed to a peak around $1,900 in September 2011, weeks after the first downgrade of the U.S. government’s credit rating. It fell sharply in April 2013, then recovered, and broke above $2,000 for the first time in August 2020 during the pandemic. The gold prices in 2011 page shows how the climb to that peak unfolded month by month.

The pandemic year is covered the same way on the gold prices in 2020 page, including the March sell-off that came before the summer rally.

Timeline of U.S. gold price milestones

Later records, including the current all-time high, are tracked on the gold all-time high page, and the figures after 2000 in our yearly tables come from daily COMEX closes.

Reading historical gold prices correctly

Old prices are easy to misread. The same year can show several different “gold prices” depending on the source and method.

• Nominal vs real: historical tables, including ours, show nominal dollars. The $850 of 1980 bought far more goods than $850 buys now, so the inflation-adjusted peak was much higher than the number suggests.
• Fix vs close: older records usually quote the London fix, set at a fixed time of day. Modern U.S. data often uses the COMEX closing or settlement price. The two differ by a few dollars on any given day.
• Average vs extreme: an annual average smooths out the year’s highs and lows. The 1980 average was far below the January peak.
• Official vs market: before 1975, the U.S. price was an official figure. From 1968 the London free-market price could differ from it by a wide margin.

Comparing a historical price with today

1. Pick one source and one method, such as annual averages or year-end closes, and use it for both years.
2. Calculate the nominal change: today’s price minus the old price, divided by the old price.
3. To adjust for inflation, multiply the old price by the ratio of today’s consumer price index to the index in the old year.
4. Compare the adjusted figure with the gold price today to see the real change.
5. Keep taxes in mind: gains on physical gold are taxed as collectibles, at a maximum long-term federal rate of 28%.

For a visual view of the same history, including the gold-to-silver ratio, see the gold price chart page.

Silver followed its own path through these decades, including its own 1980 spike, recorded on the silver price history page.

Where pre-2000 prices come from

Before electronic data feeds, the main daily record of the gold price was the London fixing, first held in September 1919 and set by a small group of bullion banks. U.S. official prices before 1975 come from Treasury and Federal Reserve records. Older annual tables, including ours, mostly use averages of the London afternoon fix, which is why they are rounded and why a single dramatic day, such as January 21, 1980, looks muted in an annual average.

The gold price in 1980, beyond the peak day

The $850 fix was one day. Within weeks the price had fallen well back, and the average for 1980 as a whole was far below the peak. Anyone comparing “the gold price in 1980” with today should say which figure they mean: the one-day record, the annual average or the year-end price.

Historical terms in brief

• Gold standard: a system where a currency is defined as a fixed weight of gold and can be exchanged for it.
• Gold window: the U.S. Treasury’s facility for converting foreign governments’ dollars into gold, closed in 1971.
• Two-tier market: the 1968 to 1971 arrangement with one official price and one free-market price.
• London fix: the twice-daily London benchmark price, run since 2015 as the LBMA Gold Price.
• Bretton Woods: the 1944 agreement that tied other currencies to the dollar and the dollar to gold at $35.
• Gold certificate: paper currency once redeemable in gold coin, called in along with coins in 1933.