Search
Search the whole magazine.
Full-text search across every article — headlines, decks, body copy, pull quotes, captions and FAQs — plus our editorial and legal policies.
20 results for “Lost-wax casting”
Markets · 8 August 2026
Moving Bullion: The Logistics Nobody Prices
…between markets — 400 oz in London, kilobars in Asia — so relocating metal often means re-casting it, not just flying it. · When freight and re-casting capacity are constrained, the London–New York spread widens; the dislocation is a logistics signal, not a market failure. · What…
Ingrid Sørensen · 17 min read
Craft · 5 June 2026
The Alchemy of Craft: What Goldsmiths Know That Machines Don't
…as granulation and repoussé remain hand skills with no full machine equivalent. · CAD and casting have displaced volume production, not the top of the trade. · What does 18k gold mean? Eighteen parts gold in twenty-four by mass — 75 per cent gold, marked 750. The remaining quarte…
Yusuf Demir · 11 min read
Science · 9 August 2026
The Metallurgy of Karat
…ass is not gold, and that quarter is engineered. It sets hardness, colour, melting range, casting behaviour, response to polishing and resistance to tarnish. Change it and you change everything about how the metal behaves on the bench, even though the assay result stays identical…
Tomas Herrera · 16 min read
Industry · 7 August 2026
How Fake Gold Is Detected
…— not any single instrument. · Visual and provenance check: refiner marks, serial number, casting texture, and whether the bar has a documented custody record. Most fakes fail here, on details a specialist notices instantly. Dimensional gauging: calipers to a hundredth of a milli…
Tomas Herrera · 15 min read
History · 9 August 2026
The Hoard Problem: What Buried Gold Actually Tells Us
…ounder's or scrap hoards: a metalworker's stock of recyclable material. Expect fragments, casting waste, ingots and mismatched pieces valued by weight rather than as objects. · Nothing in the gold decides between these. What decides is context: the soil profile, the container, wh…
Marguerite Adler · 16 min read
Markets · 2 August 2026
Who Actually Sets the Gold Price
…London Good Delivery bar — the wholesale unit 100 oz COMEX deliverable bar — a different casting entirely T+2 Standard loco London spot settlement 2×/day LBMA benchmark auctions, 10:30 and 15:00 London · The demand side has four different clocks · Ask why the price moved and you…
Ingrid Sørensen · 15 min read
Markets · 6 August 2026
Why Central Banks Started Buying Gold Again
…be. That reading misunderstands the participant. A reserve manager buying gold is not forecasting a higher price; in most cases the institution would prefer a lower one, since it intends to keep buying for years. The flow is slow, price-insensitive and largely indifferent to the…
Ingrid Sørensen · 17 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
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 · 13 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 · 16 min read
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 eroded. · A h…
Yusuf Demir · 12 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 · 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…
Tomas Herrera · 15 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
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 · 15 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 · 12 min read
Industry · 6 August 2026
The Scrap Trade
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 selle…
Ingrid Sørensen · 15 min read
Craft · 3 August 2026
The Wedding-Season Bid: How Jewellery Demand Sets the Floor
Half the world's gold is worn, not stored. In India and China that distinction barely exists — and the buying behaviour it produces is the most reliably contrarian force in the entire market. · Jewell…
Yusuf Demir · 16 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 · 13 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 · 18 min read
