Two other key years that are important to historical gold prices are 19. In 1944, the price of gold changed again when several powerful countries negotiated the Bretton-Woods Agreement, which made the US dollar the official global currency and set the price of gold at US$35. Roosevelt cut the US dollar’s ties with gold, allowing the government to pump money into the economy while lowering interest rates. In order to rectify the damage done by surging interest rates, in 1933, US President Franklin D. In the early 1930s, the US government was unable to stimulate the economy and believed that it needed to deter people from cashing in deposits and depleting the gold supply. The US in particular decided to make the move away from gold because the country was facing both mounting unemployment and spiraling deflation. In turn, the value of the US dollar increased, pointing to the beginning of the end of the gold standard. This caused the Fed to continually raise interest rates in fear that the country might run out of gold. After that, investors flocked to gold as a safe haven, trading in their paper currency for the yellow metal. It is this path of gold fixing that led to gold’s position today: a metal with a price per ounce that can change with the wind.īoth the price of US$20.69 and the gold standard remained in play until 1933, and were relevant factors in the Great Depression of 1929, which began after the US Federal Reserve raised interest rates in 1928 and the stock market crashed in 1929. But when the US created the Gold Standard Act in 1834, prices were set at US$20.69. In 1791, when the metal was under the British gold standard, prices were set at US$19.49 per ounce. Jumping ahead to a more pertinent historical time period in gold’s history, it is important to examine the monetary policy of Britain and the US. This was also a period of time when taxes were increased and the first signs of hyperinflation in the economy became apparent. Prices would not change until the 211 to 217 AD time period, when the value of gold rose to 50 coins per pound.Ī major jump for gold came in 306 AD, when Constantine the Great valued the precious metal at 70 coins per pound in order to finance the military. While physical gold has been around since 30 BC, when the Roman Empire declared that the price of gold would be set at 45 coins per pound, people did not begin using the yellow metal as a source of currency until 364 BC. You will benefit from the lowest costs for buying, selling and storing platinum.In order to understand the present, it is important to go back and evaluate what happened in the past - and this is no different when looking at gold.

Spot, in other words, doesn't necessarily reflect a price you might actually get from any individual bank or dealer, and it cannot reflect the spread between prices to buy and prices to sell.įor private investors, only BullionVault gives you direct access to that trading spread, enabling you to set or accept prices as you choose using our live Order Board. Like the spot price published by other sources (such as Reuters or Bloomberg) it represents the average of many wholesale quotes, and – crucially – it represents the average of those quotes' mid-points. It's important to understand that the spot price shown above on BullionVault's chart is provided for reference. Yes, BullionVault gives you direct access to wholesale platinum, gold, silver and palladium at live professional-market prices, starting from as little as 1 gram at a time.

Historic gold pricing