Methodology & sources

Gold is the ruler. The dollar is the thing being measured — and shrinking.

In Gold answers one question: what was a given amount of money actually worth, in a given year, measured in honest weight rather than in the currency that has been debasing underneath it? Everything on this site is a deterministic lookup plus arithmetic. There are no estimates, no models, no interpolation, and no AI anywhere in the number path.

The formulas

Figure	Formula
Gold weight then	amount ÷ gold price of that year
In gold today	gold weight × live gold spot
Official story (CPI)	amount × (CPI now ÷ CPI then)
Money created (M2/M3)	amount × (money supply now ÷ money supply then)
Value lost, measured in gold	1 − (gold price then ÷ gold price now)

The three "today" figures are three rulers laid against the same amount of money. They diverge; the divergence is the argument.

The data

Series	Source	Coverage
US gold price	Legal pegs (1913–1971), then annual market averages from MeasuringWorth; live spot from GoldAPI	1913–present
US CPI	FRED CPIAUCNS (CPI-U, BLS, 1982-84=100)	1913–present
US money supply	FRED M2SL	1959–present; deliberately gated off before 1959 — no fabricated data
AUD gold price	USD gold ÷ AUD/USD exchange rate (FRED DEXUSAL); live AUD spot from GoldAPI	1971–present
Australian CPI	FRED AUSCPIALLQINMEI (ABS via OECD)	1948–present (pages use 1971+)
Australian M3	FRED MABMM301AUM189S (broad money, OECD)	1960–present
Silver & platinum spot	GoldAPI (XAG, XPT), USD and AUD	live only

The peg history

From 1913 to 1933 the US dollar was defined as 1/20.67 of a troy ounce — $20.67 was not a market price but the law. In 1933, Executive Order 6102 outlawed private gold ownership; in 1934 the Gold Reserve Act repriced gold to $35, a 41% devaluation by statute. That peg anchored Bretton Woods from 1944 until August 15, 1971, when the gold window closed. Americans could not legally own bullion again until December 1974. Pre-1971 figures on this site are therefore notional by design — which is the point: they show what the fixed definition concealed.

Determinism and its limits

Annual averages are used for historical years; spot moves by the second. The current calendar year is excluded from the per-year pages because its annual figures are provisional. Years with no source data simply do not get a page — nothing is interpolated or back-filled. When the database is unreachable the API can fall back to a verified seed dataset, but published pages render from the live database with visible as-of dates.

Freshness

Gold, silver, and platinum spot (USD and AUD) refresh every five minutes. CPI and money-supply series refresh monthly as FRED publishes. Current values: gold $4,043/oz · A$ gold $5,761/oz · spot as of 2026-08-02 02:35:37 UTC.

Use the numbers

The full engine is public and free: /api/calculate?amount=100&year=1971&currency=usd and /api/spot?currency=aud — documented in /llms.txt. Attribution appreciated: cite In Gold (ingold.au).

Start anywhere: every year in USD, every year in AUD, the FAQ, or the calculator itself. Not financial advice.

Method. Gold weight = amount ÷ the gold price of that year; "today" figures rebase the same amount by CPI, money supply, and gold spot. Deterministic — no estimates, no models, no AI in the number path. Annual averages. Sources: FRED CPIAUCNS, FRED M2SL, MeasuringWorth, GoldAPI live spot. Not financial advice. In Gold — the calculator · API
1971 · The Australian story · Methodology · FAQ · Glossary · USD years · AUD years