The Archive
26 long-form pieces across history, markets, industry, craft, mining and science. Filter by desk, re-sort, or search the full text of every issue.
Industry
Counterfeiting gold is not about making something that looks right. It is about defeating a specific test, and the industry's defences are an escalating conversation between forgers and instruments.
7 August 2026 · 16 min read
Industry
Roughly a quarter of the world's annual gold supply has been gold before. It arrives as broken chains, single earrings and dental crowns, and it moves through a chain of intermediaries that most sellers never see past the first counter.
6 August 2026 · 16 min read
Markets
For three decades official institutions were net sellers of bullion, and the policy consensus treated the metal as a museum piece. Then, quietly, the world's reserve managers reversed. The reasons are less about inflation than about the plumbing of settlement.
6 August 2026 · 14 min read
Mining
A gold mine is not a hole with gold in it. It is a spreadsheet with a hole attached — and the single number that decides which rock is ore and which rock is waste moves every time the price does.
5 August 2026 · 20 min read
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