Gold, jewelry, art and antiques: do treasures hold their value?

Two centuries of one ounce

For most of American history the price of gold was not a price at all but a definition. The Coinage Act of 1792 put 247.5 grains of pure gold into a ten-dollar coin, the eagle, which makes a troy ounce $19.39. A law of 1834 trimmed the eagle and one of 1837 settled it at $20.67 an ounce, where it stayed for almost a century; in 1934 a proclamation under the Gold Reserve Act moved it to $35.00.

From 1960 the line follows the London market price. The official price lived on beside it — $38.00 from 1972, $42.22 from 1973 — and that last figure is still in the US Code, as the rate at which the Treasury issues gold certificates to the Federal Reserve. In October 2026 the market paid $4,105, ×97.2 the price in the law books. The gold line shows the same ounce in today's dollars: $557 in 1871, the first year with consumer prices on this site.

A fixed price is not a fixed value

A law can fix how many dollars buy an ounce; it cannot fix what those dollars buy. When prices of everything else fell, the fixed-price ounce bought more; when they rose, it bought less. From 1871 to 1960 its buying power swung ×3.33: from $1,105 in today's dollars in June 1896 to $332 in June 1920, both at the same legal price of $20.67.

The fixed price hid two more things. From 1862 to 1878 paper dollars could not be exchanged for gold, and in greenbacks gold cost more than its legal price; the chart shows the legal price. And from 1933 to 1974 Americans were not allowed to hold gold coins or bullion, apart from small exceptions such as collectors' coins and jewelry — for four decades the price in the table was one most people could not pay.

Gold, silver and platinum on the market

A market price did not make gold steadier. Its first peak after inflation came in January 1980, at $675 an ounce — $2,915 in today's dollars. By April 2001 it had lost 83% of that buying power, and only in February 2025 did an ounce buy as much again: a wait of 45 years. Its record after inflation so far: $5,158 in February 2026; in October 2026 the ounce stood 20% below it, at $4,105.

Silver and platinum kept value worse. Silver's best month after inflation is still January 1980: $168 an ounce in today's dollars, against $57.00 in October 2026 — 66% below. Platinum peaked in February 1980 at $3,755 in today's dollars; in October 2026 it fetched $1,621, 57% less. From 1971 to 2025, after inflation, gold gained +4.5% a year, silver +2.2% and platinum +0.5%.

Jewelry: the price tag follows the shop, not the metal

A gold ring is part metal and part work, design and shop. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis keeps a price index of the jewelry and watches Americans buy, back to 1929: by 2025 the price tag had risen ×4.75 (+1.6% a year), while consumer prices rose ×18.8 (+3.1%) and gold ×166 (+5.5%). Against everything else people buy, jewelry got 75% cheaper.

In the 15 years when gold's yearly average rose 20% or more, the median jewelry tag rose +3.5% — about as much as consumer prices (+3.5%), nowhere near gold (+35.9%). The index follows new pieces in shops — with changes in quality taken out, and watches in the same basket — not what a used piece fetches when you sell it.

Art: one painting, two price tags

There is no free, open price index of art: the art indexes that exist are proprietary. What can be checked is a repeat sale — the same work sold twice at public auction, both prices published by the auction houses themselves. We collected 11 such works and measured each against the S&P 500 with dividends and against gold over the very same months.

The champion, Jean-Michel Basquiat's Untitled, went from $19,000 in 1984 to $110.5M in 2017: ×5,816, or +30.0% a year. Across all 11, the median was +12.2% a year (+9.3% after inflation) against +11.6% for the S&P 500 over the same months; 6 of the 11 beat stocks and 9 beat gold. 2 sold for less than before: the worst, Richard Hambleton's, lost 66% in 5.7 years.

Read these as a highlight reel, not as a return. Auction houses publish their noteworthy repeat sales because they make headlines; works that failed to sell or went quietly for less rarely make such lists. The prices also leave out what owning art costs: the buyer's premium and the seller's commission at each sale, insurance, storage and restoration.

Two long stories

Renoir's Nature morte au melon, amandes et figues sold for $9,500 in 1927 and $2.4M in 2019: +6.2% a year over the whole span, against +10.0% for stocks with dividends. Its last leg, from $615,300 in 1986, earned +4.3% a year while stocks did +10.2%. A small Warhol Mao fetched $7,250 in 1978, then resold twice at a loss, down to $3,500 in 1983 (52% below its first price) — and $1.2M in 2019. Whoever sold in 1983 would have called art a poor store of value; whoever held on would not.

What no open index measures

Antiques, stamps, coins, wine, watches and classic cars hold much of the world's treasure, and the data are thinnest exactly there. Each piece is one of a kind, it trades rarely and often privately, and the price trackers that exist are run by dealers, auction platforms or insurers from their own sales. This site uses only official and open data, so instead of numbers, here is what makes each of them hard to measure.

What held its value best

Put everything measured on one scale: the real return a year, after inflation, from yearly averages, from each start year on the switch to 2025. From 1971 the order is: the S&P 500 with dividends (+6.8%), gold (+4.5%), silver (+2.2%), platinum (+0.5%), jewelry tags (−1.8%) and a dollar bill (−3.8%). Stocks with dividends led from 4 of the 5 start years shown.

Gold's place depends on when you start: #2 from 1971, #2 from 1980, #2 from 1990, #1 from 2000 and #2 from 2010. From 1980 it made +0.8% a year after inflation, from 2000 +7.8%. Jewelry's price tag fell behind inflation from every start year. A dollar bill under the mattress lost 87% of its buying power from 1971 to 2025.