Datadory notebook

How far back does gold price history go?

How far back does gold price history go? Farther than almost any commodity Datadory catalogs. Stooq pages daily XAUUSD rows back to March 1793, the World Bank Pink Sheet runs monthly from January 1960, Trading Economics starts 3 January 1968, goldprice.org plots daily points from 4 January 1973, and Goldhub averages prices from 1978.

1,744 datasets. Pick your catch.

Which source should you pick for which depth?

For multi-century or half-century backtests, Stooq's daily XAUUSD OHLC rows are the widest window; for 60-plus years of monthly macro comparison in constant dollars, the Pink Sheet wins because it deflates via MUV to constant-2010 prices; for machine-learning tutorials, Kaggle - Gold Price Data packages 2,290 daily rows pairing GLD closes with S&P 500 (SPX), oil (USO), silver (SLV) and EUR/USD from 2 January 2008 to 16 May 2018 in one zipped 130,560-byte CSV; for fund-era studies, SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) Fund Data runs 5,676 daily rows since 18 November 2004 with tonnes held alongside NAV.

Why does gold's record go deeper than other commodities?

Because gold was money before it was a commodity, several independent institutions kept price records long before electronic markets existed.

Three families overlap here. Official statistical agencies publish annual reference tables: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries - Gold carries a yearly two-page public-domain chapter whose editions are archived back to 2000 for time-series reconstruction, with salient statistics covering 2020–2024e for the United States plus 17 producer countries. Multilateral aggregators such as the World Bank fold gold into cross-commodity series from January 1960. And market-facing archives — Stooq's nominal daily rows, goldprice.org's post-1973 plot, Kitco's charts from about 1999 — fill the daily granularity.

The consequence is practical: you can assemble a continuous gold price line across three centuries by stitching nominal daily quotes (Stooq), official annual averages (USGS chapters, archived to 2000), and deflated monthly benchmarks (Pink Sheet from 1960). No other commodity Datadory catalogs offers a comparable spread of overlapping free vintages.

What do the newest sources cover?

Depth and freshness trade off, so short-horizon work leans on different datasets than century-scale research.

Where to go next

This page is the history-depth chapter of Datadory's gold cluster. Continue with:

  1. Dataset detail: Stooq - XAUUSD Historical Gold Data for the 1793-floor daily series, World Bank Commodity Markets (Pink Sheet) for deflated monthly history from 1960, and World Gold Council GoldHub data hub for 1978-onward multi-currency averages.
  1. gold data hub for the full industry view, and best data for gold teams if you are building a quant workflow.

Pick up where this leaves off

Every one of these ships with sample rows before you commit to anything.

Gold Global

Stooq — XAUUSD Historical Gold Data

Diversified Metals & Mining Global benchmark prices quoted at exchange and regional…

World Bank Commodity Markets (Pink Sheet) Data

Precious Metals & Minerals Global price series in multiple currencies with country-level…

World Gold Council GoldHub Data Hub: Fourteen Series, One Gold Ledger

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Questions worth asking

What is the oldest free daily gold price series?

Stooq - XAUUSD Historical Gold Data is the deepest free option: daily XAUUSD OHLC rows paged back to March 1793 in nominal terms, about 15,300+ rows in the modern continuous series, served 40 rows per page without registration. Treat pre-modern rows as context, since Stooq grants personal use only.

Does any gold price dataset reach back before 1900?

Yes, exactly one in this slice. Stooq's paging reaches March 1793; every other free series starts later - the World Bank Pink Sheet in January 1960, Trading Economics at 3 January 1968, goldprice.org at 4 January 1973, Goldhub averages at 1978, and Kitco charts around 1999.

Can I get deflated (real) historical gold prices?

Yes. The World Bank Commodity Markets (Pink Sheet) publishes monthly and annual gold from January 1960 in nominal terms alongside real-dollar series deflated to constant-2010 prices via the MUV index, downloadable as XLSX under commercial delivery terms 4.0 with attribution to 'World Bank Commodity Price Data (The Pink Sheet)'.

How far back does gold futures data go?

To August 2000 on Yahoo Finance, where the GC=F continuous contract's daily bars run to its first trade date - roughly 6,500 bars - with minute-level intraday reaching about 7 days back. Weekly futures positioning from CFTC Commitments of Traders reports starts earlier, at 15 January 1986 in Legacy format.