United States official gold is still carried on the Treasury books at $42.22 per fine troy ounce (a troy ounce is the precious-metal ounce, about 31.1 grams; fine means pure metal content). That book value is a leftover legal par — the last official dollar price of gold written into statute — not the market price you see quoted in London or on futures markets (COMEX). It is not a forecast, and it is not a price anyone can present metal against today.
Book versus spot
Two numbers sit on the same pile of metal. Spot is the market print: a London PM fix, a COMEX nearby, or another dated quote in dollars per troy ounce. Book is the value written into the U.S. fiscal accounts. The Treasury’s Status Report of U.S. Treasury-Owned Gold, and the Federal Reserve’s H.4.1 gold-stock line, still use the statutory rate of $42.2222 per fine troy ounce — usually shortened to $42.22.
The stock itself is large and slow-moving. Treasury reports on the order of 261.5 million fine troy ounces of official gold, held mainly as “deep storage” at Fort Knox, West Point, and Denver, with a smaller working stock at the Mint. At the book rate that stock is about $11.041 billion. At a market print of, say, two thousand dollars an ounce, the same ounces are a different arithmetic product. The ounces did not change. The unit of account did.
Gold certificates issued by the Treasury to Federal Reserve Banks match that book stock. The certificate is an intra-government claim, not a public window. No citizen, and no foreign official holder, can present dollars and demand those ounces at $42.22. The 1971 gold-window close ended official convertibility for foreign holders. The book rate survived as an accounting leftover.
How the official price got to $42.22
The Gold Reserve Act of 1934 reset the official U.S. gold price from $20.67 to $35 an ounce after the 1933 recall. Bretton Woods then used that $35 par for official dollar–gold convertibility. The market print and the official par were meant to stay near each other. After the mid-1960s they did not.
On 15 August 1971 the United States suspended convertibility for foreign official holders. In December 1971 the Smithsonian Agreement raised the official par to $38. The Par Value Modification Act of 31 March 1972 (Public Law 92-268) wrote that $38 figure into U.S. law. A further devaluation followed. Public Law 93-110 of 21 September 1973 set the par at $42.2222 per fine troy ounce.
That 1973 statute is the last official U.S. gold par. Congress did not raise the book rate again when the market floated. Spot left $42.22 behind. The Treasury continued to carry the same ounces at the same statutory dollars. H.4.1’s gold-stock line still prints in that book unit, not in market dollars.
A short arithmetic table
The divisions below are arithmetic only: a named spot, or this site’s LBMA/COMEX year average from this site’s published year-average price series, divided by the two official pars. They do not say gold is cheap or dear. They do not project a path. $35 is the 1934–1971 official par. $42.22 is the 1973–present book rate. For years before September 1973, the $42.22 column is a later yardstick applied backward, not a par that then existed.
- 1971 year average $40.62 (LBMA/COMEX series used on this site): $40.62 ÷ $35 = 1.16×; $40.62 ÷ $42.22 = 0.96×.
- 1973 year average $97.32: $97.32 ÷ $35 = 2.78×; $97.32 ÷ $42.22 = 2.31×. The $42.22 par was written that September.
- 21 January 1980 London PM $850 (this site’s 1980 gold print): $850 ÷ $35 = 24.29×; $850 ÷ $42.22 = 20.13×. The 1980 year average was $612.56 → 17.50× and 14.51×.
- 2000 year average $279.11: $279.11 ÷ $35 = 7.97×; $279.11 ÷ $42.22 = 6.61×.
- 6 September 2011 London PM $1,895: $1,895 ÷ $35 = 54.14×; $1,895 ÷ $42.22 = 44.88×. The 2011 year average was $1,571.52 → 44.90× and 37.22×.
- 2020 year average $1,769.64: $1,769.64 ÷ $35 = 50.56×; $1,769.64 ÷ $42.22 = 41.91×.
- 2024 year average $2,386: $2,386 ÷ $35 = 68.17×; $2,386 ÷ $42.22 = 56.51×.
Read any row as a ratio of two published dollars, not as a valuation model. The Treasury still books the stock at the last statutory par. The market prints another number. Both can be true at once because they answer different questions.
What the book number is for
Fiscal accounts need a dollar figure for a government asset. After 1973 the United States chose not to mark official gold to the market on the main Treasury gold line. The book stays at $42.22. Market-value illustrations — ounces times spot — appear in commentary and on this site’s desk. They are a different product. They do not rewrite the statute.
Other official holders treat gold differently. Some central banks revalue gold toward market prices on their own balance sheets. Some keep a historical cost. The IMF’s International Financial Statistics report physical gold and a dollar value used for reserve arithmetic. Those are reporting conventions. They are not a U.S. statutory par, and they are not this page’s $42.22.
Keep the jobs apart. Sound Money History tells how $35 and $42.22 became law. This page only records that the book rate is still $42.22, that spot is a different series, and that dividing one by the other is arithmetic. How people handle bars and coins lives under gold and silver in practice, not here.
What this page is not
This page does not say the Treasury “should” revalue gold. It does not treat $42.22 as a secret price, a floor, or a target. It does not turn a book-to-spot multiple into a reason to buy or sell metal. Official gold on the U.S. books is a government asset at a frozen par. Spot is a market print. The gap is a fact of two ledgers.
Return to gold and silver markets for the other fact pages under Markets: how central banks report gold in reserves, what the gold–silver ratio measures, and what country rankings of physical silver demand measure. For the statute story that produced $35 and then $42.22, open the 1971 episode linked above. The narrative stays there. The leftover book rate stays here.