Information on Central Bank Gold Holdings

Information on Central Bank Gold Holdings
June 19, 2011

I’m not feeling very inspired this week, so I thought I’d pass along an excellent data set aggregated by Tim Green, author of The Ages of Gold (2007). Here’s his book:

http://shop.gfms.co.uk/acatalog/The_Ages_of_Gold2.html

For the World Gold Council, Green assembled some statistics on central bank gold holdings and gold production, dating back to 1845. I think this is a fine resource for those with an interest in such things. Here it is:

Tim Green’s Central Bank Gold Dataset (in .pdf).

From that, this is perhaps the most interesting graph:

Information on Central Bank Gold Holdings

Information on Central Bank Gold Holdings

This graph shows the migration out of gold coins and into paper banknotes, with gold reserves held by central banks.

Information on Central Bank Gold Holdings

The same, expressed as percentages of total aboveground gold. I think the percentages are a little high.