Search the whole magazine.

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 time…

Tomas Herrera · 16 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. ·…

Amara Okonjo · 20 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

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

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

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 markets will…

Tomas Herrera · 17 min read

Industry · 2 July 2026

Nine Nines: Inside a Modern Gold Refinery

…bars trade without re-assay in the wholesale market. · Provenance documentation now determines a bar's marketability as much as its fineness. · Recycled scrap is a large and often more profitable feedstock than mined doré, but it demands heavier sorting and compliance work befor…

Tomas Herrera · 19 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

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 · 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

Craft · 5 June 2026

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

…arked 750. The remaining quarter is alloying metal, usually copper and silver, which determines hardness and colour. · Why is pure gold rarely used in jewellery? At 24k gold is soft enough to be marked by a fingernail's pressure over time and deforms out of shape in daily wear. A…

Yusuf Demir · 16 min read

Industry · 6 August 2026

The Scrap Trade

…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 fineness, then discounted for testing, refining, transport and each intermediary's margin. · High-street payouts commonly la…

Ingrid Sørensen · 16 min read

Science · 10 August 2026

Where Gold Actually Comes From

…t all of the gold present when Earth formed sank into the core with the iron; the gold we mine arrived later, in a bombardment known as the late veneer. · Ore is not made by geology delivering gold to one place but by hot water dissolving trace gold from enormous volumes of rock…

Tomas Herrera · 17 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

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

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

History · 14 July 2026

The Gold Standard: How a Soft Yellow Metal Became Money

…· Keynes's 'barbarous relic' critique was an argument against subordinating employment to mine output, not a dismissal of gold as a store of value. · Gold rushes and reserve accumulation are two sides of the same demand story: private discovery in the nineteenth century, official…

Marguerite Adler · 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

Markets · 11 September 2026

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

…world's governments and central banks say they hold — about a fifth of all the gold ever mined, worth at current prices in the region of three trillion dollars. The figure appears in every annual demand report, every central bank speech, every chart of official-sector buying. It…

Ingrid Sørensen · 22 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

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

Markets · 6 August 2026

Why Central Banks Started Buying Gold Again

…aring full gold backing should be treated as rhetorical rather than a description of an imminent, arithmetically feasible policy. · How does the IMF treat gold? The IMF holds one of the world's largest gold reserves and permits member states to include gold in their official rese…

Ingrid Sørensen · 14 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

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

History · 9 August 2026

The Hoard Problem: What Buried Gold Actually Tells Us

…dicators that a hoard was given rather than hidden. · Can you tell where ancient gold was mined? Only approximately. Trace-element profiles and lead isotope ratios can be compared with ore-body signatures, and the technique works best on objects made from a single, freshly refine…

Marguerite Adler · 16 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…

Policies · 6 August 2026

Editorial Standards & Corrections

…gifts · Anyone writing for this publication discloses to the editor any holding in a gold miner, royalty company, refiner, exchange-traded product or dealer that could reasonably be affected by their reporting. Where a holding exists and the assignment proceeds, the interest is d…

Policies · 6 August 2026

Privacy Policy

…GoldMagazine 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…

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

Cookie Policy

…ot treat continued scrolling as consent. We do not pre-tick boxes. We do not make refusal cost you the article, and we do not present a 'reject' option that is deliberately harder to find than 'accept'. Where a reader in a jurisdiction with an opt-out regime rather than an opt-in…