Letters to the Editor (December 14, 1987)

I would like to know if you could settle a dispute a friend and I have had concerning gold prices in the last 100 years.

My friend says that gold has never been down near the $20 an ounce mark. I say that it has. I have subscribed to The Northern Miner now for several years, but cannot remember reading anything concerning the price of gold during the past one hundred years.

Could you please settle this for us? Chris Besse Windsor, Ont. Editor’s note– It looks as though you win, your friend loses. According to T. P. Mohide, a noted authority on gold and author of the book “Gold,” published by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources in 1981, the price of gold had been set by the United States government at $20.67 (US) per ounce before 1934, in which year it was fixed at $35 per ounce by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The new free market in gold opened in March of 1968. It swiftly reached a price of $100 per ounce just five years later, and has continued to climb.

In his book, Mohide noted that in 1717 Sir Isaac Newton, Master of the Mint in London, fixed the price of gold at 84 shillings, 11 pence halfpenny per troy ounce (about four pounds, four shillings) and this price lasted for almost two centuries — until 1914.