GoldPrice ConverterLoading live prices…
The gold price year by year, from 1980 to 2025 — every annual high, low and the events behind the moves.
A historic bull market — past $2,000, $3,000 and $4,000 amid a pandemic, record central-bank buying and de-dollarization.
A decade of two halves: a 2011 record near $1,920, a brutal 2013 crash, then a powerful 2019 breakout.
The bull market is born — gold turns up from a 20-year low and crosses $1,000 for the first time in 2008.
The long bear market — central-bank selling and booming stocks grind gold down to a 20-year low in 1999.
The aftermath of the legendary January 1980 blow-off top at $850, a nominal record that stood for 28 years.
For most of modern history gold was money itself, its price fixed by governments rather than set by markets. That changed in 1971, when the United States ended the dollar’s convertibility into gold and the metal began to trade freely. The story told on this page begins with the spectacular result of that freedom: the inflation-fuelled mania of the late 1970s that drove gold to an all-time high of $850 an ounce in January 1980 — a nominal record that would stand for twenty-eight years.
The two decades that followed were unkind. As Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker crushed inflation with record interest rates, and as confidence in paper assets soared through the 1980s and 1990s stock booms, gold drifted into a long, grinding bear market. Relentless central-bank selling pushed it all the way down to a 20-year low near $253 in 1999 — the very moment, in hindsight, that the tide was about to turn.
The 2000s rewrote everything. A weakening dollar, the bursting of the dot-com bubble, the 9/11 attacks and the launch of the first gold ETFs revived investment demand, and gold climbed year after year — through $500, $700 and, in the depths of the 2008 financial crisis, above $1,000 for the first time. The money-printing that followed the crisis carried gold to its 2011 record near $1,920.
After a sharp mid-2010s correction, gold found a new gear. The COVID-19 pandemic pushed it above $2,000 in 2020, and a remarkable run powered by rate cuts, record central-bank buying and de-dollarization took it past $3,000 and then $4,000 in 2025. Explore any year below to see the prices and the forces behind them, or follow the live market on our gold price chart and gold price today pages.
Gold reached its highest-ever levels in 2025, climbing above $4,000 per troy ounce for the first time. In inflation-adjusted terms, the January 1980 peak of $850 was also extraordinary — worth far more in today's money.
Gold first touched $1,000 per ounce in March 2008 and first closed above $2,000 during the COVID-driven rally of August 2020.
After its 1980 peak, gold fell through a 20-year bear market to a low near $253 per ounce in the summer of 1999, before the new bull market began.
Gold responds to inflation, interest rates, the strength of the US dollar, central-bank buying and selling, and geopolitical or financial crises. Each year page here explains the specific drivers behind that year’s move.