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26 results for “Hallmark”
Craft · 22 July 2026
Hallmarks and Assay: How Anyone Proves Gold Is Gold
A hallmark is one of the oldest consumer protection technologies in continuous use. It is also, on close inspection, a small masterpiece of institutional design — and it is being quietly erode…
Yusuf Demir · 15 min read
Industry · 7 August 2026
How Fake Gold Is Detected
…and usually only discovered when the item is later sold and independently assayed. · Does hallmarking guarantee a piece of jewellery is genuine? It substantially improves the odds where an independent assay office applies the mark, because the maker's own claim is checked by a th…
Tomas Herrera · 16 min read
Science · 9 August 2026
The Metallurgy of Karat
…t the alloying partners, not about purity. · Is 9k gold real gold? Yes, and it is legally hallmarkable as gold in the UK and much of the Commonwealth, though not in countries whose minimum standard is 14k or higher. At 37.5% gold it is harder and cheaper than 18k, with a paler co…
Tomas Herrera · 17 min read
Craft · 3 August 2026
The Wedding-Season Bid: How Jewellery Demand Sets the Floor
…ondon price are the clearest real-time read on Asian physical appetite. · Import duty and hallmarking rules move demand between the formal and informal trade more than they move total consumption. · Why is Indian jewellery usually 22 karat? Because it is bought partly as stored v…
Yusuf Demir · 15 min read
Craft · 5 June 2026
The Alchemy of Craft: What Goldsmiths Know That Machines Don't
…per cent by mass, stamped 750 in the millesimal system that most of the world now uses on hallmarks. Fourteen karat is 585. Nine karat, common in Britain, is 375 — more alloy than gold, and a source of long-standing argument about what may honestly be called a gold ring. · The al…
Yusuf Demir · 16 min read
Industry · 6 August 2026
The Scrap Trade
…a piece before you accept a scrap quote, especially if it carries a maker's mark, an old hallmark, an unusual design or a stone of any size. Melt value is a floor, not a ceiling — auction houses, specialist dealers and vintage jewellers routinely pay well above scrap for pieces…
Ingrid Sørensen · 16 min read
Industry · 7 August 2026
After the Cyanide
Every ounce of mined gold leaves behind roughly a tonne of processed rock and the water that carried it. What happens to that material after the last shift is the part of the industry with the longest…
Tomas Herrera · 16 min read
Markets · 20 June 2026
Bring It Home: Central Banks and the Great Gold Repatriation
For half a century it was rational to store your gold in someone else's basement. Then the calculus of counterparty risk changed, and reserve managers started chartering aircraft. · Overseas custody w…
Ingrid Sørensen · 14 min read
Mining · 5 August 2026
Grade, Cut-off and the Arithmetic of an Open Pit
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. · Mo…
Amara Okonjo · 20 min read
Markets · 8 August 2026
Moving Bullion: The Logistics Nobody Prices
Between the vault and the buyer sits an industry of armoured vehicles, sealed cargo, bonded warehouses and insurance clauses. It rarely makes news, and it is the reason a spot price in London can dive…
Ingrid Sørensen · 15 min read
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…
Amara Okonjo · 18 min read
Industry · 2 July 2026
Nine Nines: Inside a Modern Gold Refinery
A doré bar arrives at 85 per cent purity and leaves at 99.99. Between those two numbers sit chlorine gas, aqua regia, an electrolytic cell and a chain of custody that is now as valuable as the metal i…
Tomas Herrera · 19 min read
Markets · 17 August 2026
Paper Gold: What You Own When You Do Not Own Bars
Most of the world's gold exposure is a contract, not a metal. Futures, unallocated accounts and exchange-traded funds each promise gold in a different way — and the differences only become visible whe…
Ingrid Sørensen · 23 min read
Industry · 4 August 2026
The Gold Inside Your Phone
Industrial demand is the quietest third of the gold market: a few tenths of a gram per handset, multiplied by billions of devices, chosen not for prestige but because nothing else conducts as reliably…
Tomas Herrera · 18 min read
History · 14 July 2026
The Gold Standard: How a Soft Yellow Metal Became Money
For roughly five thousand years, humanity kept returning to the same element to settle its debts. The story is less about greed than about the unusually boring chemistry of atomic number 79. · Gold's…
Marguerite Adler · 14 min read
History · 9 August 2026
The Hoard Problem: What Buried Gold Actually Tells Us
A field of gold torcs and coins is a spectacular find and a treacherous document. The people who buried it were not writing to us, and the reasons they had for putting it in the ground are exactly wha…
Marguerite Adler · 16 min read
Markets · 11 September 2026
The Last Audit: What We Actually Know About the World's Official Gold
Governments report holding roughly 36,000 tonnes of gold — a figure quoted everywhere and verified almost nowhere. Between the published number and the physical bar sits a chain of certificates, custo…
Ingrid Sørensen · 22 min read
Science · 8 August 2026
The Metal That Went Medical
Divide gold finely enough and it stops being gold-coloured, stops being inert in the way you expect, and starts doing work in places no bullion bar could reach — including the test strip that told you…
Amara Okonjo · 19 min read
Mining · 22 May 2026
The Other Supply Chain: Artisanal Mining and the Mercury Problem
A significant share of the world's gold is produced by people working with hand tools, informal finance and a neurotoxin. Formalisation is the stated solution. Nobody agrees on what it costs. · Artisa…
Amara Okonjo · 15 min read
Markets · 8 September 2026
The Real-Rate Trade: Why Gold Moves When Bond Yields Do
For two decades the gold price could be read off an inflation-linked bond screen. Then, somewhere after 2022, the relationship stopped behaving — and the argument about why has become the most consequ…
Ingrid Sørensen · 25 min read
Industry · 20 August 2026
The Refiner's Ledger
Somewhere between a mine's doré bar and a Good Delivery brick sits a chain of chlorination furnaces, electrolytic cells, assay labs and accreditation committees that decides which gold the world's mar…
Tomas Herrera · 17 min read
Markets · 18 August 2026
The Vault Beneath the City
Beneath the Bank of England and beneath lower Manhattan sit two of the largest concentrations of monetary gold on earth, moved between anonymous compartments by a handful of porters who never touch th…
Ingrid Sørensen · 22 min read
Industry · 28 July 2026
Urban Mining: The Richest Gold Ore on Earth Is in Your Old Phone
A tonne of good underground ore holds a few grams of gold. A tonne of discarded circuit boards can hold two hundred. So why is most of it still going into landfill? · Concentration, not tonnage, is wh…
Tomas Herrera · 16 min read
Science · 10 August 2026
Where Gold Actually Comes From
Every gram of gold on Earth was manufactured in an astrophysical catastrophe, arrived here after the planet had already formed, and was then concentrated by hot water. Three separate accidents, none o…
Tomas Herrera · 17 min read
Markets · 2 August 2026
Who Actually Sets the Gold Price
There is no single gold price. There is a London settlement number, a New York futures curve, a Shanghai premium and a jeweller's counter in Dubai — and the distance between them is where the market l…
Ingrid Sørensen · 16 min read
Markets · 6 August 2026
Why Central Banks Started Buying Gold Again
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…
Ingrid Sørensen · 14 min read
