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History · 9 August 2026

The Hoard Problem: What Buried Gold Actually Tells Us

…een a savings deposit, an emergency burial and a votive offering is rarely visible in the metal itself; it is argued from context, and context is what looting destroys. · Coin hoards date the moment of burial well and the events around it badly; the newest coin gives a terminus p…

Marguerite Adler · 16 min read

History · 14 July 2026

The Gold Standard: How a Soft Yellow Metal Became Money

…ctor diversification in the twenty-first. · Why was gold chosen as money instead of other metals? Gold does not corrode, is easily divided and recombined, is dense enough to carry high value in small volume, and is scarce but not impossibly rare. Copper was too abundant, iron rus…

Marguerite Adler · 14 min read

Science · 8 August 2026

The Metal That Went Medical

…a trivial share of global supply — the value is in the surface chemistry, not the mass of metal. · Manufacturing a usable nanogold reagent means controlling a size distribution as tightly as any conventional pharmaceutical ingredient, which is why a small number of specialist sup…

Amara Okonjo · 19 min read

Science · 9 August 2026

The Metallurgy of Karat

…partners: copper pushes red, silver pushes green-yellow, palladium and nickel bleach the metal towards white. · Almost all commercial white gold is rhodium-plated; the plating is a wear item measured in years, not a permanent finish. · Nickel white golds are restricted in the EU…

Tomas Herrera · 17 min read

Markets · 18 August 2026

The Vault Beneath the City

…n earth, moved between anonymous compartments by a handful of porters who never touch the metal with bare hands. This is how sovereign gold is actually stored, audited and, occasionally, brought home. · The Bank of England holds roughly 400,000 bars for around 100 account holders…

Ingrid Sørensen · 22 min read

Industry · 2 July 2026

Nine Nines: Inside a Modern Gold Refinery

…s, aqua regia, an electrolytic cell and a chain of custody that is now as valuable as the metal itself. · Refining is two-stage: fast chlorination to ~99.5%, then electrolysis to 99.99% and above. · Fire assay, a technique older than the periodic table, remains the referee method…

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 when the market stops working. · Paper gold is n…

Ingrid Sørensen · 23 min read

Markets · 8 September 2026

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

…ped behaving — and the argument about why has become the most consequential debate in the metal's market. · Gold pays no coupon, so its main competitor is the inflation-adjusted yield on a government bond — the classic opportunity-cost argument. · From roughly 2005 to 2021 the go…

Ingrid Sørensen · 25 min read

Markets · 6 August 2026

Why Central Banks Started Buying Gold Again

…s 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. · Official-sector selling in the 19…

Ingrid Sørensen · 14 min read

Craft · 22 July 2026

Hallmarks and Assay: How Anyone Proves Gold Is Gold

…uyer. · Does a hallmark guarantee the value of a piece? It guarantees the fineness of the metal and nothing else. Craftsmanship, brand, gemstones, design and condition are all outside the mark's scope, and a hallmark on a poorly made piece certifies only that its gold content is…

Yusuf Demir · 15 min read

Industry · 7 August 2026

How Fake Gold Is Detected

…ost tens of microns, so a plated or shelled fake reads as pure gold. XRF is excellent for detecting alloy fraud in jewellery and for confirming surface fineness; it is structurally incapable of seeing a core. · What does ultrasonic testing actually measure? The speed of sound thr…

Tomas Herrera · 16 min read

Industry · 4 August 2026

The Gold Inside Your Phone

…ce-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-board surface finish, and…

Tomas Herrera · 18 min read

Markets · 11 September 2026

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

…hat physically verifies the aggregate figure. · A reported reserve number is a composite: metal at home, metal at foreign custodians, and metal out on lease or swap. Each layer has a different evidentiary standard. · The last full physical audit of the United States gold stock wa…

Ingrid Sørensen · 22 min read

Science · 10 August 2026

Where Gold Actually Comes From

…change the gold market? Not on any timescale a reserve manager needs to plan around. The metal-rich asteroids that get cited contain gold at concentrations comparable to good terrestrial ore, and the binding constraint is the cost of retrieving mass from orbit, not the grade. ·…

Tomas Herrera · 17 min read

Markets · 20 June 2026

Bring It Home: Central Banks and the Great Gold Repatriation

…interacts with sustained official-sector buying, tightening the free float of deliverable metal. · Reserve managers accept gold's zero yield as the price of an asset that cannot be frozen, sanctioned or defaulted on by another government. · Vault capacity, not political will, is…

Ingrid Sørensen · 14 min read

Mining · 5 August 2026

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

…gold ore is typically around one to two grams per tonne — roughly a gold ring's worth of metal in a truckload of rock. · Cut-off grade is a price-dependent accounting decision, not a geological fact: a higher gold price literally converts waste into ore. · Strip ratio — waste to…

Amara Okonjo · 20 min read

Markets · 8 August 2026

Moving Bullion: The Logistics Nobody Prices

…· Bar formats differ 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 m…

Ingrid Sørensen · 15 min read

Craft · 5 June 2026

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

…ow dominates workshop supply in many trading centres, changing how goldsmiths think about metal provenance. · What does 18k gold mean? Eighteen parts gold in twenty-four by mass — 75 per cent gold, marked 750. The remaining quarter is alloying metal, usually copper and silver, wh…

Yusuf Demir · 16 min read

Industry · 20 August 2026

The Refiner's Ledger

…gold's trustworthiness rests on a small number of institutional stamps rather than on the metal itself. · What is doré and why can't it be sold directly? Doré is a semi-pure alloy of gold and silver, with residual base metals, poured into rough ingots at or near the mine site as…

Tomas Herrera · 17 min read

Industry · 6 August 2026

The Scrap Trade

…a chain of intermediaries that most sellers never see past the first counter. · Recycled metal typically supplies around a quarter to a third of annual gold demand, and its volume responds to price faster than mine output can. · Scrap is priced off spot, adjusted for assayed fin…

Ingrid Sørensen · 16 min read

Craft · 3 August 2026

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

…ugh that the piece is close to a savings instrument, while retaining enough alloy for the metal to survive being worn. Western markets favour 14 and 18 karat, which are harder and cheaper but hold far less metal. · What are making charges? The fabrication cost a jeweller adds to…

Yusuf Demir · 15 min read

Industry · 28 July 2026

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

…arily concentrated by mining standards. · The bottleneck is collection and logistics, not metallurgy; the chemistry has been solved for decades. · Informal backyard recovery captures a fraction of the gold while releasing the most toxic residues. · Recycled metal already supplies…

Tomas Herrera · 16 min read

Markets · 2 August 2026

Who Actually Sets the Gold Price

…, 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? The exchange for physical spread is the price difference between COMEX futures and loco London spot. It is normally a small, stabl…

Ingrid Sørensen · 16 min read

Mining · 22 May 2026

The Other Supply Chain: Artisanal Mining and the Mercury Problem

…the technology than by upfront cost, training and the fact that mercury delivers visible metal the same day. · Is artisanal gold ever sold into the formal market? Frequently. Metal moves from site buyers to regional traders to exporters and refiners, and by the time it is cast i…

Amara Okonjo · 15 min read

Policies · 6 August 2026

Financial Disclaimer

…has repeatedly lost a third or more of its value in real terms over multi-year periods. A metal can be 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…

Industry · 7 August 2026

After the Cyanide

…ide degrades in sunlit water over weeks; the durable hazards at a closed mine are usually metals and acidity, not the reagent itself. · Acid mine drainage generates when sulphide minerals meet air and water, and can run for centuries without intervention. · Upstream-raised tailin…

Tomas Herrera · 16 min read

Mining · 19 August 2026

Nine Grams a Tonne

…ing roughly a tonne of rock must be moved and processed for every wedding ring's worth of metal. · Energy typically accounts for a fifth to a third of a mine's operating cost, and diesel price swings move margins more than most miners' hedging books can absorb. · Water scarcity,…

Amara Okonjo · 18 min read

Policies · 6 August 2026

Editorial Standards & Corrections

…uage · This publication is written for a reader with no background in monetary economics, metallurgy or mine finance. Technical terms are defined at first use, in the sentence rather than in a glossary the reader has to go and find. Where a concept can be explained without jargon…

Policies · 6 August 2026

Privacy Policy

…e 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 archive, and any corresponde…

Policies · 6 August 2026

Terms of Use

…olerance, and we make no assessment of suitability or appropriateness for you. · Precious metals markets are volatile. Prices can fall as well as rise, leverage can amplify losses beyond the sum invested, mining equities carry operational and jurisdictional risk that bullion does…