Gold Since 1791
Data back to 1791. No chart of the modern gold supercycle is honest without the centuries that preceded it — the log axis below makes both the stillness of the gold standard and the violence of its end visible on one screen.
Log scale · annual
Source: MeasuringWorth, "The Price of Gold, 1257-Present" (Officer & Williamson, 2026). Log axis is required: gold sat at ~$19-35/oz for two centuries under the gold standard, then broke out after 1971. The flat early line is the monetary peg, not missing data.
What two centuries of gold actually show
- The peg era (1791–1971): gold held at ~$19–35/oz for 180 years. That is not missing data — it is the gold standard. The price barely moved because it was fixed by law and then by the Bretton Woods agreement ($35/oz from 1934).
- 1971–1980 — the break: Nixon ended gold convertibility; gold went from $35 to a $612 average in 1980 (peaking ~$850 intraday) — the inflation-hedge spike of a broken-dollar regime. This is the first "supercycle."
- 1980–2000 — the 20-year drain: gold bled from $612 down to ~$280 by 2000. Real rates + equity mania made a non-yielding asset unloved. A decade of real drawdown that log scale shows as a proper decline, not a blip.
- 2000–2011 — the second bull: $280 → $1,572 average (2011). Central-bank debasement fears + the 2008 crisis.
- 2020s — the modern supercycle: $1,771 (2020) → $3,450 (2025). Sovereign buying, de-dollarization pressure, and the industrialization of gold as a reserve asset. This is the context the Dow chart can’t show alone.
- Gold/silver ratio tab: the ratio (oz of silver per oz of gold) swings from ~15 (constant through the 19th century) to 80+ today — a secular message about silver scarcity, not just gold strength.