1971Turning point
Nixon closes the gold window
President Nixon suspends the dollar’s convertibility into gold, ending the Bretton Woods system. Gold, fixed at $35/oz since 1934, is set free to float, and the modern precious-metals market is born.
1979–80Surge
Stagflation and the Hunt silver corner
Runaway inflation, two oil shocks, the Iranian Revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan drove capital into hard assets. Gold’s yearly average leapt from $307 to $615 (~$850 intraday); silver rocketed toward $50 as the Hunt brothers cornered half the deliverable supply, until ‘Silver Thursday’ halved it in a day.
1980–82Crash
Volcker breaks the fever
To kill double-digit inflation, Fed chair Paul Volcker pushed interest rates toward 20%. Sky-high real yields and a strong dollar made non-yielding metals unattractive, beginning a 20-year bear market, gold roughly halved, silver fell ~75%.
1999–2001Bottom
‘Brown’s Bottom’
Two decades of decline bottomed near $250–280/oz. Britain sold half its gold reserves at the lows (forever nicknamed ‘Brown’s Bottom’), and the Washington Agreement capped central-bank selling, quietly marking the floor.
2001–11Bull market
The crisis-and-QE decade
The dot-com bust, 9/11, a commodity super-cycle, the 2008 crash and years of zero rates and quantitative easing powered a historic run. Gold climbed from ~$271 to a September-2011 peak near $1,920; silver revisited ~$48.
2008Crash
Platinum’s blow-off top
Rarer than gold and tied to car exhaust catalysts, platinum spiked to ~$2,290 intraday in March 2008, then collapsed as the auto industry seized up in the financial crisis, its annual average sliding from $1,572 to $1,205.
2013Crash
Gold’s taper-tantrum plunge
When the Fed signalled it would slow QE and stocks surged, gold fell about 28% on the year. Its worst since 1980, as investors rotated out of ‘safe’ assets. Silver fell even harder.
2015Structural break
Dieselgate sinks platinum below gold
The VW diesel-emissions scandal gutted demand for diesel cars, platinum’s biggest market, while the shift to gasoline (palladium) and EVs kept it down. Once pricier than gold, platinum has traded below it ever since.
2020Surge
Pandemic stimulus, record gold
COVID unleashed vast fiscal and monetary support and drove real yields deeply negative. Gold smashed its 2011 record, topping ~$2,075 in August 2020.
2022–25Surge
Central banks and de-dollarization
Even against steep rate hikes, gold soared, driven by record central-bank buying (led by China), the war in Ukraine, and a global pivot away from the dollar. Its annual average rose from ~$1,800 to ~$2,860, notching record after record.
The D&D take · our analysis
Gold is not really an investment. It is insurance against the system that prices every other investment. Read the eight events above again with one lens: metals do not move on jewellery demand or mining news. They move on three forces. Real interest rates, when inflation-adjusted yields fall, gold rises (1970s, 2020); when they spike, it drops (2013). Confidence in money itself, 1971 and the current central-bank buying wave are the same event in different costumes: official institutions hedging the currency system they operate. And for silver and platinum, industry · Dieselgate did to platinum what no interest rate ever could, because platinum is a car part wearing a bullion costume.
What you can take from this today: first, when you see a gold headline, check real yields before any other explanation. That single relationship explains most of the chart above, and it turns confusing news into a readable signal. Second, stop treating the three metals as one asset: gold is monetary insurance, silver is a volatile hybrid, platinum is an industrial bet. The correlation table above shows they are different products sharing a shelf. Third, respect the flat decades: from 1980 to 2000 gold went nowhere while stocks compounded, history’s verdict is that metals preserve wealth through crises but do not create it between crises. Insurance, not an engine. Size it like insurance. That is not investment advice. It is what half a century of the data above says.
Annual average prices · gold, silver & platinum, 1971–2025 (LBMA / market data, compiled via
metalcharts.org). Intraday peaks noted where cited. 2026 prices are live and volatile. Historical data for education, not investment advice.
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