August 2026 was gold’s best month since January. The price opened the month around 4,045 dollars per troy ounce, climbed over four weeks to almost 4,700 dollars, then handed back a good part of that gain in the closing sessions. The month ended with a gain of roughly 9.6 percent. Silver did even better, adding about 15 percent. Below is the full month, with the question that matters to our clients: what does a month like this mean if you want to sell old gold, jewellery or silver?
The gold price in August 2026: the numbers
| Gold | Silver | |
|---|---|---|
| Level end of July | 4,046.84 dollars | around 58 dollars |
| Lowest point | around 4,044 dollars (1 August) | around 57.6 dollars (early August) |
| Highest point | around 4,696 dollars (25 August) | around 69 dollars (25 August) |
| Level on 31 August | around 4,435 dollars | around 66.5 dollars |
| Movement over the month | plus 9.6 percent | around plus 15 percent |
What stands out immediately: the lowest point of the month fell on the very first day and the highest on 25 August, six trading days before the end. Anyone who only looked at the market on the first and the last day saw a tidy rise of almost 10 percent. Anyone watching on 25 August saw a gain of more than 16 percent that largely evaporated afterwards. That difference of nearly 250 dollars per troy ounce within a single week is exactly why we always calculate with the price at the time of your appointment, never with a figure from a few days earlier. How that daily price is built up is explained on our page about the gold price.
Three events that shaped the month
Early August: easing tension around the Strait of Hormuz. The month began at its lowest point, around 4,045 dollars. On 5 August, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC that a deal was taking shape to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Oil fell back, inflation fears eased and gold jumped more than 2 percent in a single day, above 4,200 dollars. A week later a better than expected American inflation reading pushed the price on beyond 4,400 dollars.
Mid August: the US Treasury steps in. The main engine of the month came not from the Middle East but from Washington. The US Treasury doubled the size of its buyback operations for government bonds with long maturities, in order to contain a sharply risen rate. That compressed the yield on government paper, weakened the dollar and lifted gold above 4,500 dollars late in the month, its highest level since mid May. Analysts were openly talking about the strongest month since 1999.
28 August: one speech turns it all around. At the annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Kevin Warsh gave his first speech as chair of the American central bank. He put the fight against inflation at the centre and signalled that persistent price rises remain the dominant risk. The market read that as the announcement of a September rate hike: the probability priced in jumped from around 36 to around 64 percent. Gold lost more than 3 percent that day and slipped further in the remaining sessions.
Silver gained more, but also moved more violently
Silver went from around 58 to around 66.5 dollars per troy ounce in August, a monthly gain of roughly 15 percent. On 25 August the counter even stood almost 18 percent above the start of the month. That pattern is typical: silver is a far smaller market than gold and more than half of it is consumed by industry, which makes the price swing harder in both directions. During the late August correction silver duly lost more than twice as much as gold on some days.
For anyone with silver cutlery, coins or old jewellery at home, that is mainly a practical matter. What a batch of silver fetches depends more on the day you come by than it does with gold. What counts during the weighing, and how to tell solid pieces from merely silver plated ones, is explained on the page about selling silver.
Where the gold price stands today
The monthly figures are not a snapshot of today. After Jackson Hole the decline first continued, until gold traded around 4,320 dollars per troy ounce on 2 September, its lowest level in more than three weeks. A rebound above 4,400 dollars followed, which largely disappeared again on Thursday 10 September. That day the European Central Bank raised its rates and US producer prices came in higher than expected. Gold lost 1.90 percent, silver as much as 5.46 percent. On Friday 11 September gold stands at around 4,370 dollars and silver at around 64.50 dollars, both slightly higher after the US inflation figure. The market now prices in roughly an 86 to 90 percent chance of a US rate hike on 16 September.
Put that in perspective. Gold today stands around 20 percent above its level of a year ago, but clearly below the record of late January 2026, when the price reached 5,589.38 dollars. August was therefore a strong month inside a year that has grown more cautious after an exceptional start. Reading that gold has just had a record month does not mean the price is at its peak today.
What a month like this means if you sell old gold
A month like August above all shows how little sense it makes to rely on a single figure. Within those four weeks the gap between the lowest and the highest level exceeded 650 dollars per troy ounce. On a collection of old jewellery holding roughly a hundred grams of fine gold, that quickly amounts to several thousand euros of difference, purely depending on the day the scales come out.
Three things remain essential. First, it is not the price alone that determines your settlement, but the actual gold content of your items. An 18 carat chain contains 75 percent gold, a 9 carat one barely 37.5 percent, and that difference weighs heavier than a few percent of price movement. Second, the exchange rate counts, because the world market quotes in dollars and you are paid in euros. Third, today’s price is the only figure that tells you anything about today’s settlement. How that step from price to payout works in practice is set out on the page about selling old gold.
August was a strong month for gold and an even stronger one for silver, but the price has cooled off sharply since. So never let yourself be guided by a monthly figure or by a headline from last week. Ask for the level on the day itself, and have your items weighed and tested for purity before you compare any price.
September brought new markers immediately. The US jobs report came in much stronger than expected on 4 September, the ECB raised its rates on 10 September and US inflation rose 0.4 percent on the month in August. On 15 and 16 September the American central bank meets to decide on rates, and that too can move the price sharply again, in either direction. We follow that closely and publish the updated level on the site every working day.