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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 what makes an ore economic — and e-waste is e…

Tomas Herrera · 13 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. · Artisanal and small-scale minin…

Amara Okonjo · 12 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 of th…

Tomas Herrera · 18 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 do…

Amara Okonjo · 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 was a Cold War convenience: gold near a…

Ingrid Sørensen · 13 min read

Industry · 7 August 2026

How Fake Gold Is Detected

Counterfeiting gold is not about making something that looks right. It is about defeating a specific test, and the industry's defences are an escalating conversation between forgers and instruments. · Tung…

Tomas Herrera · 15 min read

Craft · 5 June 2026

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

Gold's working properties are so extreme they border on the absurd — one gram drawn into three kilometres of wire. Inside a trade where the tools have barely changed and the hands are irrepl…

Yusuf Demir · 11 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 c…

Tomas Herrera · 15 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 what…

Marguerite Adler · 16 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 lives. · T…

Ingrid Sørensen · 15 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 timeline a…

Tomas Herrera · 17 min read

Craft · 22 July 2026

Hallmarks and Assay: How Anyone Proves Gold Is Gold

…and fineness describe the same thing on different scales: 18ct is 750 parts per thousand gold. · Plating, filling and surface enrichment are the failure modes that surface-reading instruments miss. · Hallmarking regimes differ sharply by country, so an unmarked piece may be perf…

Yusuf Demir · 12 min read

Industry · 2 July 2026

Nine Nines: Inside a Modern Gold Refinery

…ré bar? A doré bar is the semi-pure alloy poured at a mine site, typically 70–90 per cent gold with silver and base-metal impurities. It is the standard form in which mines ship output to refiners. · What does 999.9 fine mean? It means 999.9 parts gold per thousand — 99.99 per ce…

Tomas Herrera · 12 min read

History · 14 July 2026

The Gold Standard: How a Soft Yellow Metal Became Money

…tory is less about greed than about the unusually boring chemistry of atomic number 79. · Gold's monetary role rests on physical properties — inertness, divisibility, density and scarcity — not on decree. · The classical gold standard (c. 1870–1914) was a short, unusually globali…

Marguerite Adler · 14 min read

Markets · 6 August 2026

Why Central Banks Started Buying Gold Again

…990s was coordinated to avoid disorderly markets, not because reserve managers had judged gold worthless. · The post-2010 reversal is dominated by emerging-market reserve managers rebuilding a domestically held, unencumbered share of reserves. · Gold's appeal to a reserve manager…

Ingrid Sørensen · 17 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…

Amara Okonjo · 15 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 wh…

Tomas Herrera · 16 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 sellers never see past the first co…

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. · Jewellery is…

Yusuf Demir · 16 min read

Markets · 8 August 2026

Moving Bullion: The Logistics Nobody Prices

…ited chain it must usually be re-refined before it can re-enter at full value. · Physical gold moves mostly as belly cargo on scheduled passenger flights, which ties bullion logistics to airline capacity. · Bar formats differ between markets — 400 oz in London, kilobars in Asia —…

Ingrid Sørensen · 17 min read

Policies · 6 August 2026

Financial Disclaimer

…stand your circumstances. · 2. The specific risks of this asset class · Price volatility: gold is often described as a haven, yet it 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-r…

Policies · 6 August 2026

Terms of Use

…th our journalism, what we promise, and what we do not. · 1. Acceptance · By accessing TheGoldMagazine you agree to these Terms of Use. If you do not accept them, please do not use the site. These terms operate alongside our Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy and Editorial Standards,…

Policies · 6 August 2026

Privacy Policy

What we collect when you read TheGoldMagazine, why we collect it, how long we keep it, and the rights you can exercise over it. · 1. Who we are and what this policy covers · TheGoldMagazine is an independent editorial publi…

Policies · 6 August 2026

Editorial Standards & Corrections

…material so that there is as little to disclose as possible. Whistleblowers in refining, mining and bullion banking are encouraged to make contact through channels they control, from equipment that is not their employer's. · Practically, that means we keep contact records apart…