Gold & silver markets

The live desk prints prices and ratios like a clock. A few of those numbers still carry a statute, a survey method, or an official bookkeeping leftover. These pages explain those captions — why a Treasury line can show gold at $42.22, how central banks report gold in reserves, what the gold–silver ratio measures, and what a country ranking of bar-and-coin silver demand actually counts.

The tone is documentary arithmetic. No page here names a miner, a target, or a reason to prefer one metal. Narrative from coinage to 1971 lives under Sound Money History. Handling bars and coins lives under gold and silver in practice.

Four current facts

A book value is the dollar figure a government still writes into its books for gold — often a leftover legal rate, not the market price. A reserve line is how much gold a central bank reports holding. A ratio is one price divided by another at a named time. A country line is how much bar-and-coin silver buyers in that country took off the shelf in a survey year (offtake = that identified purchase volume).

Official gold book value is the cleanest entry if you have just read 1971 and wonder why $42.22 still appears on a U.S. Treasury line. Central-bank gold reserves is the entry if you have just looked at the desk’s country bars — including a short Poland section on that same page. The gold–silver ratio defines the quotient and pins it to 1980 and 2011 snapshots — useful if you have just seen the gold–silver ratio (GSR) on the live prices. Physical silver demand by country defines the bar-and-coin ranking against a 2024 World Silver Survey table.

1. Official gold book value — Statutory $42.22 versus the market price; arithmetic on named year averages and peak prints.
2. Central-bank gold reserves — How gold is reported in foreign-exchange reserves; vault preferences; dated official purchases.
3. Gold–silver ratio — Definition of the quotient; 1980 and 2011 as named anchors.
4. Physical silver demand by country — Identified bar-and-coin offtake by country; what the ranking does not measure.

Where the numbers come from

Figures come from public official series and from the same London (LBMA) and U.S. futures (COMEX) averages shown on the desk. When a page divides the market price by $35 or by $42.22, that is arithmetic on named prints. When it cites a World Gold Council or IMF-based annual net, that is a dated official-sector line. When it cites a World Silver Survey country line, that is identified retail offtake, not a mine ranking. None of those operations is a forecast.

Two facts can look alike and still answer different questions. The U.S. $42.22 line is a frozen legal rate. A central bank’s reserve share may use a market-related dollar value. Mixing them produces a slogan. Keeping them labeled produces a figure you can check. For definitions of sound money, hard money, and “backed,” use Sound Money. For Weimar, the Fed, or the Nixon shock as stories, use History.