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Mining · 19 August 2026

Nine Grams a Tonne

What does it actually cost to pull an ounce of gold out of the ground? The honest answer runs through grade decline, energy and water bills, permitting delays and the closure liabilities nobody prices until the m…

Amara Okonjo · 18 min read

Mining · 5 August 2026

Grade, Cut-off and the Arithmetic of an Open Pit

…subset of resources under a stated price assumption, and they are restated every year. · All-in sustaining cost excludes the capital that built the mine, so a mine can be profitable on AISC and still never repay its investors. · The decade-plus permitting and construction timeli…

Amara Okonjo · 20 min read

Industry · 7 August 2026

After the Cyanide

…ecause it is the only reagent that dissolves gold selectively at industrial scale and low cost; the risk lies in handling and storage, not in the chemistry being exotic. · Free cyanide degrades in sunlit water over weeks; the durable hazards at a closed mine are usually metals an…

Tomas Herrera · 16 min read

Markets · 8 September 2026

The Real-Rate Trade: Why Gold Moves When Bond Yields Do

…competitor is the inflation-adjusted yield on a government bond — the classic opportunity-cost argument. · From roughly 2005 to 2021 the gold price tracked the inverse of ten-year US inflation-linked yields closely enough to be traded as a spread. · That relationship weakened sha…

Ingrid Sørensen · 25 min read

Mining · 22 May 2026

The Other Supply Chain: Artisanal Mining and the Mercury Problem

…finance and a neurotoxin. Formalisation is the stated solution. Nobody agrees on what it costs. · Artisanal and small-scale mining employs millions and is the largest source of anthropogenic mercury emissions. · Mercury amalgamation persists because it is cheap, fast and require…

Amara Okonjo · 15 min read

Markets · 8 August 2026

Moving Bullion: The Logistics Nobody Prices

…fining or vault capacity tightens, the exchange-for-physical spread widens by roughly the cost of closing the gap. · Is stored gold insured? Professional vaults carry all-risks cover, but the terms matter more than the headline. Read for the per-location limit, whether cover appl…

Ingrid Sørensen · 15 min read

Markets · 17 August 2026

Paper Gold: What You Own When You Do Not Own Bars

…delivery; the contract is a price instrument first and a delivery mechanism second. · The costs that decide long-run outcomes are the ones nobody quotes: fund expense ratios, futures roll, storage, and the bid-offer spread on physical coins. · Logistical friction, such as the 202…

Ingrid Sørensen · 23 min read

Markets · 20 June 2026

Bring It Home: Central Banks and the Great Gold Repatriation

…by the demonstration that reserves can be immobilised. · Bringing gold home imposes real costs: vault construction, insurance, audit and lost liquidity. · The trend interacts with sustained official-sector buying, tightening the free float of deliverable metal. · Reserve manager…

Ingrid Sørensen · 14 min read

Industry · 7 August 2026

How Fake Gold Is Detected

…d against it. · Underkarated jewellery, not exotic tungsten-cored bars, is the fraud that costs the industry the most money overall, because it is quiet, distributed across thousands of small items, and invisible without an assay. · Does a magnet test prove gold is real? It dispr…

Tomas Herrera · 16 min read

Industry · 2 July 2026

Nine Nines: Inside a Modern Gold Refinery

…e or six nines requires additional electrolytic passes or zone refining at sharply rising cost, and the market for that grade is narrow — chiefly semiconductor bonding wire and scientific reference standards. · Is recycled gold treated any differently from newly mined gold once r…

Tomas Herrera · 19 min read

Craft · 5 June 2026

The Alchemy of Craft: What Goldsmiths Know That Machines Don't

…nd deforms out of shape in daily wear. Alloying dramatically increases hardness at modest cost to purity. · Is white gold really gold? Yes — it is gold alloyed with white metals such as palladium or nickel to neutralise the yellow, and it is often rhodium-plated for a brighter fi…

Yusuf Demir · 16 min read

Industry · 4 August 2026

The Gold Inside Your Phone

…ications are the least price-sensitive gold demand anywhere, protected by requalification costs far larger than any metal saving. · How much gold is in a smartphone? Roughly 0.2 to 0.35 grams, depending on the model and generation, spread across connector plating, printed-circuit…

Tomas Herrera · 18 min read

Science · 8 August 2026

The Metal That Went Medical

…being read by — and the material earns its price. Reproducibility is worth more than raw cost in a diagnostic supply chain. · Beyond the strip · Immunogold labelling has been standard in electron microscopy since the 1970s: attach gold particles of a defined size to an antibody,…

Amara Okonjo · 19 min read

Industry · 28 July 2026

Urban Mining: The Richest Gold Ore on Earth Is in Your Old Phone

…mal sector that is faster and cheaper precisely because it externalises the environmental cost. · How much gold is in a mobile phone? On the order of a few tens of milligrams — worth a small amount individually. The economics only work in bulk: it takes thousands of handsets to a…

Tomas Herrera · 16 min read

Markets · 2 August 2026

Who Actually Sets the Gold Price

…leave a vault. A retail coin adds refining, minting, insured transport, dealer inventory cost, VAT or sales tax where applicable, and a margin. On small denominations that stack can be a double-digit percentage of the metal value. · What is the EFP and why do traders watch it? T…

Ingrid Sørensen · 16 min read

Industry · 20 August 2026

The Refiner's Ledger

…compliance with accreditation standards as an existential priority rather than a routine cost of doing business. · A bar of doré arriving at a Swiss refinery looks, to the untrained eye, like nothing worth the armed escort that typically accompanies it. It is a rough, unglamorou…

Tomas Herrera · 17 min read

Markets · 11 September 2026

The Last Audit: What We Actually Know About the World's Official Gold

…o enforcement mechanism for a country that misstates a holding, short of the reputational cost of a later correction. · The World Gold Council, whose published tables are the version of the 36,000-tonne figure most investors actually see, is transparent about its own position in…

Ingrid Sørensen · 22 min read

Craft · 3 August 2026

The Wedding-Season Bid: How Jewellery Demand Sets the Floor

…re harder and cheaper but hold far less metal. · What are making charges? The fabrication cost a jeweller adds to the metal value: labour, wastage during working, design and margin. They typically run from single-digit percentages on plain machine-made chain to well over twenty p…

Yusuf Demir · 15 min read

Science · 9 August 2026

The Metallurgy of Karat

…ing from scratch, then resubmitting for a fresh hallmark. · Does higher karat gold always cost more per gram? In terms of pure metal content, yes — an 18k item contains more gold per gram than a 9k item of the same weight, and that difference is reflected in scrap or intrinsic va…

Tomas Herrera · 17 min read

Markets · 18 August 2026

The Vault Beneath the City

…etal, most economists argue, than of an entrenched bureaucratic reluctance to undertake a costly and logistically difficult exercise for an asset whose custody has never been seriously challenged in court. · Why do countries store gold abroad at all instead of at home? Historical…

Ingrid Sørensen · 22 min read

History · 14 July 2026

The Gold Standard: How a Soft Yellow Metal Became Money

…reserves and gold-backed borrowing financed the belligerents of the First World War, but sustaining that finance required suspending convertibility almost everywhere, since no state could fight a total war while also promising to redeem its currency in metal on demand. The gold…

Marguerite Adler · 14 min read

Industry · 6 August 2026

The Scrap Trade

…d each margin is defensible on its own terms — the counter carries fraud risk and holding cost, the consolidator carries transport and insurance, the refiner carries process losses. Stacked, they explain most of the gap between spot and what a seller is offered. · Do the arithmet…

Ingrid Sørensen · 16 min read

Science · 10 August 2026

Where Gold Actually Comes From

…and platinum in reactors and accelerators. The yields are measured in micrograms and the cost per gram exceeds the market price by orders of magnitude. Transmutation is a demonstration of physics, not a supply source. · Will asteroid mining change the gold market? Not on any tim…

Tomas Herrera · 17 min read

Policies · 6 August 2026

Financial Disclaimer

…e price another buyer will pay, and holding it carries storage, insurance and opportunity costs. · Currency effects: gold is quoted in dollars. A reader whose liabilities are in another currency bears an exchange-rate exposure that can dominate the metal's own move. · Mining equi…

Craft · 22 July 2026

Hallmarks and Assay: How Anyone Proves Gold Is Gold

…ck at 748 and being refused; the trade works to 752 or 753 and treats the difference as a cost of doing business. · Reading a UK mark Four elements do the work: the sponsor's mark identifying who submitted it, the millesimal fineness in a shaped shield, the assay office town mark…

Yusuf Demir · 15 min read

Markets · 6 August 2026

Why Central Banks Started Buying Gold Again

…the national gold reserve entirely. The argument was not eccentric. Gold paid no coupon, cost money to store, sat on the balance sheet earning nothing, and had spent two decades falling. Sovereign bonds paid a yield, settled instantly, and were issued by governments that everyon…

Ingrid Sørensen · 14 min read

History · 9 August 2026

The Hoard Problem: What Buried Gold Actually Tells Us

…ships that would be destroyed by lifting objects individually in the field. The technique costs more and takes longer, but it converts a find into an excavation that can be repeated, reviewed and re-interpreted by later researchers using techniques that did not exist at the time…

Marguerite Adler · 16 min read

Policies · 6 August 2026

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Policies · 6 August 2026

Terms of Use

…or any other instrument. · Our reporting frequently describes prices, spreads, production costs, reserve holdings, hedging structures and market mechanics. It does so to explain how the gold market functions, not to tell any individual reader what to do with their money. We do no…

Policies · 6 August 2026

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