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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 lives. · The headline gold price…

Ingrid Sørensen · 15 min read

Markets · 8 August 2026

Moving Bullion: The Logistics Nobody Prices

…ehouses and insurance clauses. It rarely makes news, and it is the reason a spot price in London can diverge from a bar in New York. · Allocated custody means specific numbered bars belong to you; unallocated means you are a creditor of the bank, and the difference only becomes v…

Ingrid Sørensen · 17 min read

Markets · 20 June 2026

Bring It Home: Central Banks and the Great Gold Repatriation

…uring the Cold War it was safer outside the likely path of an invasion. · What does 'loco London' mean? It designates gold held in accredited London vaults, the default location for wholesale settlement. A loco London price is a price for metal deliverable there, which is why bar…

Ingrid Sørensen · 13 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 less about inflation than about the plumbing of s…

Ingrid Sørensen · 17 min read

Craft · 3 August 2026

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

…and the buying behaviour it produces is the most reliably contrarian force in the entire market. · Jewellery is roughly half of annual gold demand, and the majority of it is bought in Asia. · High-karat jewellery in India and China functions as savings with a wearable form facto…

Yusuf Demir · 16 min read

Industry · 2 July 2026

Nine Nines: Inside a Modern Gold Refinery

…· Good Delivery accreditation governs which bars trade without re-assay in the wholesale market. · Provenance documentation now determines a bar's marketability as much as its fineness. · What is a doré bar? A doré bar is the semi-pure alloy poured at a mine site, typically 70–9…

Tomas Herrera · 12 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 for as long. · A modern smartphone contai…

Tomas Herrera · 15 min read

Policies · 6 August 2026

Financial Disclaimer

…a long-run store of value and a poor short-run investment simultaneously. · No cash flow: bullion pays no coupon and no dividend. Its return depends wholly on the price another buyer will pay, and holding it carries storage, insurance and opportunity costs. · Currency effects: go…

Science · 8 August 2026

The Metal That Went Medical

…old-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 whether you had a virus. · Gold nanoparticles are red because collective electron oscillations — surface plasmons — absorb gr…

Amara Okonjo · 15 min read

Industry · 7 August 2026

How Fake Gold Is Detected

…gold ±0.01 mm Dimensional tolerance a modern mint holds · Coins are a different problem · Bullion coins are, counter-intuitively, harder to counterfeit convincingly than bars, and the reason is manufacturing tolerance. A sovereign mint strikes to specifications published to a hun…

Tomas Herrera · 15 min read

Industry · 6 August 2026

The Scrap Trade

…ill electrolysis for high purity. The output is cast into bars or grain and re-enters the market indistinguishable from any other refined gold. · The gold market's supply side is usually discussed as though it consisted of mines. It does not. In most years, somewhere between a qu…

Ingrid Sørensen · 15 min read

History · 9 August 2026

The Hoard Problem: What Buried Gold Actually Tells Us

…land and Wales under the Treasure Act, require finds to be reported and offer a reward at market valuation shared between finder and landowner, which has produced one of the world's richest datasets of amateur discoveries. · A hoard photographs beautifully. Torcs curved like ques…

Marguerite Adler · 16 min read

Policies · 6 August 2026

Editorial Standards & Corrections

…onable means proportionate: longer for a complex investigation, shorter for a fast-moving market story. Responses are reflected fairly in the piece; a refusal to comment is reported as such, without insinuation. · 5. Use of artificial intelligence · We do not publish machine-gene…

Policies · 6 August 2026

Terms of Use

…tly 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 not know your financial position, your tax residen…

Craft · 5 June 2026

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

…ically. Stone settings are placed to tolerances a hand could not repeat reliably. · For a market that wants a specific design in eleven sizes with consistent stone spacing, this is straightforwardly better. Casting also wastes less metal than fabrication from sheet and wire — and…

Yusuf Demir · 11 min read

History · 14 July 2026

The Gold Standard: How a Soft Yellow Metal Became Money

…ended; gold's role did not. Central banks kept their bars, valuation practices shifted to market prices, and gold moved from being the anchor of the system to being the asset states hold precisely because it is nobody's liability. · Nobody's liability · That last phrase is the ke…

Marguerite Adler · 14 min read

Mining · 22 May 2026

The Other Supply Chain: Artisanal Mining and the Mercury Problem

…t removes mercury from the process entirely and uses a material available in any hardware market. · It also demands a higher-grade concentrate than panning typically produces, which means it must be paired with improved gravity separation to work. As a package the two are strong;…

Amara Okonjo · 12 min read

Industry · 28 July 2026

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

…the intervention with the largest untapped effect. · What recycling actually does to the market · Recycled gold occupies a specific structural position: it is the only significant supply source that reacts quickly to price. Mines cannot accelerate; scrap can. When the price move…

Tomas Herrera · 13 min read

Craft · 22 July 2026

Hallmarks and Assay: How Anyone Proves Gold Is Gold

…ry alloy 585 14 karat — the durable everyday standard 375 9 karat — legal as gold in some markets, not in others · Fire assay: destroying the sample to tell the truth · The referee method has barely changed in principle since the sixteenth century. A precisely weighed sample is w…

Yusuf Demir · 12 min read

Science · 10 August 2026

Where Gold Actually Comes From

…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 timescale a reserve manager n…

Tomas Herrera · 18 min read

Mining · 5 August 2026

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

…price, energy costs and recovery rate, the boundary between ore and waste moves with the market. · What does all-in sustaining cost actually measure? Cash operating costs plus royalties, corporate overhead and the sustaining capital needed to keep the current operation running.…

Amara Okonjo · 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 · 17 min read

Science · 9 August 2026

The Metallurgy of Karat

Pure gold is too soft to hold a stone, too soft to hold an edge, and the wrong colour for half the world's taste. Almost everything you own that is gold is a designed alloy — and the design is where t…

Tomas Herrera · 16 min read

Policies · 6 August 2026

Cookie Policy

…and to investigate abuse. They are not used to build reader profiles, are not shared for marketing, and are retained for a short rolling window before deletion. Blocking cookies does not stop them, because they are generated by the act of requesting a page at all. · 10. Changes…

Policies · 6 August 2026

Privacy Policy

…covers · TheGoldMagazine is an independent editorial publication reporting on gold — its markets, its mines, its metallurgy and the people who work it. This Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal data collected through this website, including every article page, the arch…