History of Gold Prices

Key Takeaways

1. Gold prices surged ~83% from February 2020 to February 2025, reaching an all-time high of $2,880.22 per ounce.
2. Economic instability, inflation fears, and geopolitical events have been key drivers of gold’s price increases since 2000.

Gold prices are a hot topic right now.

Historically, gold prices have been influenced by several different economic and geopolitical conditions. As savvy precious metals investors, it’s important to examine these different factors and how they have caused increases or decreases in the past, as they can provide clues about where gold is going in the future.

This page is a chronicle of gold’s recent journey in the United States. So, let’s look at the progression of gold prices since 1900.

Quick Links – Last 5-Years – 20th Century – 1970-1980 – 1990-Early 2000s – 2000-2011 – 2012-2019 – 2020-current

What Moves the Gold Market?

There are multiple events and elements that can play a role in the price of gold. Some of these elements are macroeconomic. Others are more specific to gold itself. These include:

• Economic factors and the US dollar
• Market demand
• Geopolitical factors
• Supply and demand
• Central bank policies

Gold’s Soaring Value: A 5-Year Price Surge

The last five years have witnessed a spike in gold prices never seen before. The price for an ounce of the yellow metal has seemed to soar in recent times as inflation and economic instability in the US have dominated the public mind. Here are the most recent times that the close of business has yielded notable peaks in the price of gold:

Date	Price per troy ounce	Key events
October 30, 2024	$2,788.30	Lower interest rates/economy
April 18, 2024	$2,380.05	Chinese demand/inflation
April 13, 2023	$2,039.83	Central bank purchasing
August 5, 2020	$2,038.09	COVID-19 pandemic

From Stability to Soaring Heights: Gold’s Century-Long Journey

Gold didn’t just appear as a store of wealth. It has been considered a precious item for thousands of years, and it has been valued by every civilization capable of refining it. However, in more recent times, the year 1900 proved to be a critical one for the journey of gold’s value in the United States.

Currency Act of 1900

Gold and silver had been important to the economy of the United States since its inception. The first Coinage Act, which created the US Treasury and our currency system as we know it, tied the value of the dollar to quantities of both metals.

However, the use of both metals as a basis for the currency’s value was not without detractors. In fact, the country had turned increasingly to the gold standard since the 1870s, although it wasn’t codified as such by law.

The debate culminated in the presidential election of 1900, which pit William Jennings Bryan – an advocate of using both silver and gold – against William McKinley. McKinley won, and shortly afterward signed the Currency Act of 1900 into law. This Act’s primary function was to establish the gold standard as the basis for the dollar’s anchoring to precious metals.

Thus, 1900 represented a turning point for gold in America. In that year, it officially became the value behind the dollar.

With the advent of the gold standard, the price of gold became a stable number – inextricably tied to the dollars in the country. However, the tangible and locked value of gold created strife for some – particularly leaders and politicians who sought to increase government spending and needed to expand the money supply to do so.

Early 20th Century

Date	Price per troy ounce	Key events
January 30, 1934	$35	Passage of Gold Reserve Act
March 14, 1900	$20.67	Passage of Gold Standard Act

For the first 33 years of the 20th century, the Gold Standard Act established and maintained the price of gold at $20.67 per ounce. It was possible to trade dollars and gold back and forth with each other through the Federal Reserve.

However, the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 changed the sentiment of the country about the role of government in public life. The desperation generated by the downturn led the public to elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.

Roosevelt immediately began implementing a more progressive series of policies upon his inauguration in 1933. One of these policies was Executive Order 6102, which “[forbade] the hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States.”

Citizens were therefore required to turn in most of their gold stashes for $20.67 per ounce. The policy effectively made the gold standard moot, as the government exerted its control over the vast majority of gold reserves in the country. It also made personal ownership of more than a trifling amount of gold a crime.

FDR followed up this action in 1934 with the signing of the Gold Reserve Act. On its surface, the Act increased the statutory exchange rate of gold from $20.67 to $35 an ounce. This action attracted imports of gold from foreign miners – which the government quickly collected into its depositories, notably Fort Knox.

Thus, the Federal Reserve found itself empowered to increase the money supply, even though no new value was entering the economy. Even though gold was nominally set at $35/ounce, its “correct” rate was likely to be much higher.

$35 per ounce effectively became the worldwide value for the price of gold after the US and 43 other countries signed the Bretton Woods Agreement. At that point, the signatory countries gained the ability to exchange their currencies for dollars, which were still backed by gold in the US depositories.

This situation stayed in effect until 1971. In that year, both the gold standard and the Bretton Woods Agreement came to an end – due to the actions of Pres. Richard Nixon – and ushered us into the era of the floating exchange rate. The price of gold gained its ability to increase its value according to the demands of the market.

1970s and 1980s

Date	Price per troy ounce	Key events
February 18, 1980	$661.50	Iran oil/hostage crisis
August 6, 1976	$112.50	Lowest free market price after initial rise from $35/oz
December 23, 1974	$193.00	All-time high
April 22, 1974	$174.75	All-time high

Nixon’s decision to end the gold standard in 1971 allowed the value of gold to increase due to the inflation inherent in the unmoored dollar. Only 18 months after the August 1971 announcement, gold had almost doubled in price.

However, the 1970s were not a quiet time in the US, both internally and internationally. Part of the reason that Nixon moved forward with fiat currency was to combat high rates of inflation and unemployment present in the country.

At the same time, the situation deteriorated substantially in the Middle East. In 1973, Israel entered a conflict with several Arab states – notably, Syria and Egypt – which came to be known as the Yom Kippur War.

The US chose to support Israel in the conflict. However, this decision bore a significant consequence due to the immense oil reserves present in the various Arab countries. After Nixon pledged billions of dollars in aid to the Israelis, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) instituted an embargo on oil exports to the United States.

The resulting “oil shock” created even more economic turmoil in the US. Even though the embargo only lasted a few months into 1974, gold hit successive record highs in April and December of that year. Gold breached over $100 per ounce in January 1974, and it has never fallen below that mark since.

However, after gold peaked at $193 per troy ounce in December 1974, gold prices did not continue to escalate. As the Middle East conflicts and embargoes came to an end, the relative quiescence gave investors a bit more confidence in the US dollar.

As it happened, the price of gold notably declined over the next two years. Its $112.80 nadir in August 1976 is the low point for gold in the past 50 years.

At the same time, US monetary policy during the 1970s notably shifted to a lackadaisical attitude toward inflation. The rising inflation rates and an overall slowdown in the economy created one of the nastier economic periods in American history – the era of stagflation.

Because of the instability of the economy, the price of gold began to increase after 1976 and reached $217.60 at the beginning of 1979. However, 1979 came to represent a turning point for the price of gold, as the situation in the Middle East soured.

The Iranian Revolution began in 1978 with the deposition of Shah Reza Pahlavi, the last monarch of Iran. Subsequently, the country became the Islamic Republic of Iran and instituted a theocratic system of government in the country.

Because of the revolution and unrest, oil production in Iran declined significantly and created another oil crisis in 1979. US oil shortages created tension and lines at gas stations and pushed gold to new heights.

Then, in November 1979, the situation took a dramatic twist when the US embassy in Tehran was overrun by protestors and revolutionaries. 53 US citizens became imprisoned inside the former embassy and would remain prisoners of the regime for more than a year.

By the end of 1979, an ounce of gold cost $512 to purchase. Two months later, gold reached its all-time high price of $661.50. This record high would remain the high-water mark for the price of gold until February 2007.

In a way, this all-time high price remains the highest price for an ounce of gold to this day. In 2024 dollars, the equivalent price would be $2997.30, more than $200 higher than the record achieved in October 2024.

After the February 1980 peak and a subsequent secondary peak in September 1980, the price of gold declined precipitously. In fact, in the 21 months between September 1980 and June 1982, gold fell from $651 to $305.50.

Though the price would rebound at times during the decade, it would continue to fluctuate between $300 and $500 for the rest of the 1980s. On balance, the decade concluded much as it began, with a February 1990 price of $416.65 falling roughly in the median of the decade’s fluctuations.

1990s and Early 2000s

Date	Price per troy ounce	Key events
February 15, 1990	$416.65	High point of the 1990s
February 2, 1996	$414.50	Second-highest price during the decade
July 13, 1999	$254.65	Economic boom due to dot-com era

However, the 1990s brought a demonstrative difference to the progression of gold’s price. The decade was a period of economic stability and prosperity overall thanks to strong economic growth and, amazingly, a government budget surplus.

Now, with strong economic performance, the gold price is likely to decline. February 1990 price represented the highest price for gold in the US for the next thirteen years. Aside from a secondary apex in February 1996 – where the price came within $2 of the February ‘90 peak – gold prices in the 1990s and early 2000s stayed largely lower than they did during the previous decade.

Bear in mind that, in addition to the strong economy and budget surplus, the latter half of the decade also bore witness to the rise of the dot-com era. Dollars were flying around and created a new class of millionaires and billionaires, including Jeff Bezos and Mark Cuban.

There were two nadirs of note during this period. Both low marks, in July 1999 and April 2001, hovered around $250 per ounce. The first low point was the lowest gold had fallen since 1979, and – as we indicated with other prices – is lower than the 1979 equivalent in terms of purchasing power.

However, economic booms never last forever, and two events combined to break the run that the country had enjoyed since 1990. The first of these events was the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000. In the zeal to become part of the growing internet business, venture capitalists had foolishly committed their funds to websites that could not turn a profit on their own. As the VC money petered out, the websites began to fail, and the economy began to wane.

Then, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, created very real instabilities in the lives of most Americans. The aftereffects of the attacks in New York City and Washington, DC spread out across the globe and provoked American military responses in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other locations.

The one-two punch of these events began a slow but unmistakable upward movement in the price of gold. Prices have never returned to these levels since then.

From $300 to $2,600: Gold’s Meteoric Rise in Two Decades

In the time since 2000, gold has been on a dramatic upward trajectory. Despite a period of stagnation in the 2010s, gold became a much more valuable commodity to own in the past quarter century.

2000-2011

Date	Price per troy ounce	Key events
April 10, 2001	$256.65	Lowest price of the 21st century
May 23, 2006	$664.64	Housing crisis and interest rate increases
March 12, 2008	$983.45	Housing market/subprime mortgage collapse
August 24, 2011	$1,755.00	Great Recession

As we mentioned, the $256.65 per ounce that you paid in April 2001 was the cheapest gold has ever been in the 21st century. The instability from the burst of the dot-com bubble and the September 11 attacks began a meteoric rise in gold prices that had two distinct periods of massive increases.

The first of those periods occurred during the latter half of the 2000s. As most remember, the subprime mortgage crisis and the collapse of the housing market reached a fever pitch in 2008.

However, there had been signs of problems in the economy three years earlier. The Fed raised interest rates by 100 basis points between 2005 and 2006, and economists noted slowdowns in both housing permits and the housing market itself.

Gold investors, it seems, picked up on these omens. Between July 2005 and May 2006, gold prices increased by 50%, from $440 to $660. The close of business on May 23, 2006, established a new all-time high for the price of gold at $664.64.

The price then declined slightly over the next half year or so, presumably as short-term investors realized profit. Then, it surged back to a new high mark only ten months later in February 2007.

As the crisis deepened in the latter half of 2007, gold emerged as a bulwark against the decline in the housing market and, increasingly, the overall economy. In the nine months between August 2007 and March 2008, gold prices soared to $983.45, with gold eclipsing the $700, $800, and $900 barriers for the first time in history along the way.

However, the onset of the Great Recession subsequent to the housing crisis only exacerbated the status of the American economy. So, the then-unprecedented $983.45 for an ounce of gold in March 2008 quickly became a footnote to the trajectory of the price of gold.

A brief decline followed the then-record high, and gold fell to $765.10 per ounce in November 2008. After this month, gold began a continuous increase over the next three years. In that time, it gained almost $1000 in price, and established a new record high for an ounce of gold at $1,873 in September 2011.

2012-2019

 

Date	Price per troy ounce	Key events
September 7, 2012	$1,738.00	Lingering recession fears/high of the time period
December 25, 2015	$1,077.20	Market correction low point
May 29, 2019	$1,280.60	Pre-COVID nadir

The elevated price point persisted through the end of 2012. At one point, the price came to within $20 of that record high.

However, it’s important to understand that there was an emotional element attached to the Great Recession. Between some of the hyperbole about the event, both in the media and around water coolers, there was a terrible fear that the American economy might not recover.

Thus, the atmospheric performance of the price of gold probably pushed things beyond their natural level. Between December 2012 and June 2013, gold declined by more than $400 an ounce.

For the rest of the decade, the price of gold stagnated. It never rose above $1518 an ounce and dropped below $1100 an ounce at one point in 2016. Even as late as May 2019, you could buy an ounce of gold for $1,280.

2020-Present

Date	Price per troy ounce	Key events
December 5, 2019	$1,476.90	Final sub-$1500 price
July 30, 2020	$1,957.08	COVID-19 – new all-time record
October 21, 2022	$1,656.43	Interim between COVID and inflation fears – lowest price of 2020s so far
May 4, 2023	$2,049.91	Inflation/price concerns – first time above $2000
October 30, 2024	$2,788.36	Economy/inflation – all-time high price for gold
February 5, 2025	$2,880.22	New all-time high

There is no denying that 2020 was a pivotal year in world history. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic created an environment of existential fear in almost every country in the world.

We saw total shutdowns of businesses, the advent of militant social distancing, and a culture of unease take root in the United States. Companies both large and small absorbed grave hits to their profitability and bottom line. Small businesses were affected drastically, but the slowdown also claimed or dealt grievous wounds to companies like Bed, Bath & Beyond, JCPenney, and Hertz Rent-a-Car.

Even as we emerged from the pandemic, the economy remained injured. The situation was further exacerbated by tremendous levels of inflation in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Even as the stock market soared incongruously higher, average Americans indicated that prices at the grocery store and gas pump had become nearly untenable.

Due to all of this struggle, gold had nowhere to go but up. Between December 2019 and June 2020, gold prices increased by nearly $500 to $1,957 an ounce. The new record smashed the 2011 mark by more than $200.

The gold price then declined slightly over the next two years but remained above $1700 per troy ounce the entire time. Then, it rallied to a new record high in April 2022, but only by about $10.

A swoon in the latter part of 2022 witnessed a decrease to under $1700. However, by May 2023, gold had breached the once-unthinkable mark of $2000 an ounce.

It wasn’t finished. Growing concerns over the purchasing power of the dollar in 2023 and 2024 increased gold’s favorability to new heights. It finally arrived at its current record in October 2024, where an ounce of gold cost nearly $2,800. Of course, it then proceeded to break that record by nearly $100 only three months later.

What Moves the Gold Market?

Economic Factors

The first and most obvious influence on the price of gold in the US is the overall economic condition of the country. Because gold is rightly seen as a hedge against poor economic times, the price of gold tends to increase when things are bad.

Similarly, the strength of the US dollar influences the value of gold in the US. Generally, though not always, the price of gold and the value of the dollar tend to vary inversely.

As dollars get stronger, gold becomes cheaper. As the dollar weakens, gold increases in value.

One definitive measure of the strength of the country’s fiat currency is the amount of inflation occurring in the nation. When the US’ gross domestic product – no matter how much stuff we produce – stays the same but the actual amount of dollars in circulation increases, the value of the dollar decreases. Thus, high inflation (like we’ve had recently) tends to portend higher gold prices.

Finally, US monetary policy with respect to interest rates can make a difference on the price of gold. As the interest rate increases, the dollar becomes stronger because foreign investors flock to the higher returns. Once again, as the dollar strengthens, gold declines in value. So, gold investors are likely to prefer lower interest rates, as they tend to suggest an imminent rise in the value of gold.

Market Demand

Another obvious factor that affects the price of gold is the market demand for gold. If the amount of gold available stays the same but more people want it, the price of gold will increase.

Now, there’s no denying gold’s popularity for jewelry across the world. Though demand for jeweled items has decreased, it still represents about half of the world’s need for gold.

However, where there might be significant increases or decreases to the demand for gold lies with industry needs. Specifically, there is a great demand for gold within the electronics industry due to gold’s excellent conductivity and its tremendous resistance to corrosion. Technological advances in the future might increase or decrease the need for gold in these applications.

Finally, gold is becoming an increasingly popular investment vehicle. As the value of fiat currency declines, more investors are drawn to gold’s time-worn status as a store of wealth and worth.

Geopolitical Factors

Gold is universal across the earth, which means that it is affected by events that can occur both internally and externally in the world’s countries. Not all those events are negative, but, well, most of them are.

The first type of geopolitical event that can affect the price of gold is uncertainty in the economy. Shakiness, particularly from major economies like the US, China, and other first-world countries, can lead to noticeable increases in the demand for gold as residents of those countries seek out financial safe havens.

On the flip side, economic turmoil might have a dampening effect on the demand for gold, particularly with respect to luxury items like jewelry. So, it’s important to gauge the health of the world economy at large as a determinant of the price of gold.

In a similar vein, political changes within countries can have impactful effects on both the country’s economy and, in some cases, their precious metals production. A repressive regime might spell trouble for trade, while a liberating one might create a new player on the world stage.

Finally, countries don’t always get along with each other. So, outright wars or trade wars can constrict the supply of gold and the trade of it and can affect its price as a result.

Supply Factors

Gold is, first and foremost, a tangible product. As such, its supply is affected by practical concerns, such as its mining, refining, and transport.

So, if a major gold mine runs out of gold, the supply may become strained. If a new vein is discovered, it may lead to a glut of gold on the market.

If a natural disaster occurs that shuts down a country’s refineries, it may result in lower amounts of industry grade gold. On the other hand, technological advances to the refining process may result in more efficiency and higher production numbers.

Finally, any of the geopolitical reasons above can affect the transport of gold to its desired location. So, it’s not always so simple to have gold moving as it usually does.

Central Bank Policies

One last factor that can affect the price of gold is the behavior of central banks around the world. In the era of fiat currency, more countries are accruing hordes of gold to backstop their economies.

Furthermore, a large supply of gold can provide legitimacy to developing nations, as they can now trade with larger countries and, in theory, receive bigger loans. So, if a central bank decides to increase its stores of gold, it can make gold more scarce and more expensive.

Conclusion

The past 50 years have been a rollercoaster for gold investors. At the time that Pres. Ford rescinded FDR’s Executive Order 6102 and allowed private citizens to own gold once again, an ounce of gold cost around $200.

To be fair, that price is the 2024 equivalent of $1272 an ounce, but anyone with the foresight to buy gold back then and hang onto it has watched his or her investment become at least 2.5x more valuable by any metric. However, the benefit of hindsight is that we can all see times when picking up some extra gold would have served us well.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to predict whether you are buying at the top of the market or the bottom of it. Even though gold is still trading between $2600 and $2800 these days, there’s no guarantee that it will remain at that level – especially if the new administration proves more adept with the economy.

On the flip side, inflation is a hard thing to walk back, so gold may still have room to grow. However, the most undeniable thing is that owning gold is always a smart investment – it’s just hard to know whether it is smart immediately or eventually.