The Long View · Gold Price History
Eight centuries of price, purchasing power, and the moments that mattered — from a medieval English mint to the records of today.
1257 — 1717 · 460 years
For nearly five centuries before Newton, an ounce of gold bought roughly the same goods. Debased coin, plague and New-World bullion came and went — gold’s real value barely moved.
In 1717 Isaac Newton fixed gold at £4.25 an ounce. The price then held nearly flat for almost two hundred years — gold wasn’t an investment, it was the definition of money.
War broke the standard. Britain’s 1925 return to gold and the Depression finished it; in 1933 Roosevelt outlawed private gold and devalued the dollar 41% overnight.
A new order pegged the dollar to gold at $35 and the world to the dollar. For 27 years the price was a line drawn by treaty — as inflation quietly eroded it.
On 15 August 1971 Nixon closed the gold window. Set free, the price erupted — from $35 to $850 by 1980, the most violent revaluation gold had ever seen.
The floating era is gold’s wildest: the 1980 spike, a twenty-year bear market, the climb past $1,900, and in 2025 a new real high above the 1980 peak.
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Each era equal-width · time not to scale
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The full eight-century sweep at a glance. Hover or drag across the ribbon to read any single year, and switch the measure between real dollars and ounces of silver.
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The Golden Constant
Real value at the 1971 low
By the end of Bretton Woods, gold's inflation-adjusted value had been squeezed to its lowest in centuries — held artificially at $35.
The 1980 real peak
Freed to float, gold erupted. In nine years its real value rose more than sevenfold — then began a 45-year real bear market, not surpassed until 2025.
Above the 1980 high, at last
In 2025, in real inflation-adjusted terms, gold finally surpassed its 1980 peak — ending the longest real bear market in monetary history.
1257–1717
Before a fixed standard — gold priced by mints and markets across a half-millennium of kings, plagues and debasements.
1717–1914
Newton fixes gold at £4.25/oz. For two centuries the price barely moves — the bedrock of the world’s monetary order.
1914–1944
War, suspension of convertibility, the Depression and confiscation. The classical order breaks down.
1944–1971
Gold fixed at $35/oz, the dollar pegged to gold and the world pegged to the dollar — for 27 years.
1971–present
Nixon closes the gold window. Gold floats freely for the first time in modern history — and soars.
Go deeper
Methodology & sources. Gold price: Officer & Williamson, The Price of Gold, 1257–Present (MeasuringWorth) — British official price 1257–1790 (converted to USD at the 1791-fixed ratio, $4.4444/£), US official price 1791–1949, and the London market price 1950–2025. Inflation-adjusted values use the US CPI from 1774 and the UK Retail Price Index before it, spliced to join seamlessly — so the real ribbon spans the full record. Annual figures; pre-1700 prices are historical reconstructions. Details on the methodology page.