The Gold Standard: When Gold Was Used as Money

Long before paper currency, paper checks, and debit cards, there was another widely accepted form of payment for goods and services: gold. The use of gold as currency can be traced back to 550 BC—almost 2,600 years ago!

Gold was considered valuable then, and it still is today. Over time, gold became a widely accepted currency because it was easy to trade for goods and services. Even if you were dealing with someone that did not speak the same language, everyone understood gold and its value.

Eventually, carrying around all that gold started to be an issue. To solve this problem, countries started printing their own paper money. To guarantee gold did not lose its value, many countries, including the United Kingdom and the United States, used what is called “The Gold Standard.”

This standard was a way for paper money to be based on the value of gold. You could exchange a set amount of gold for paper money or paper money for gold, as both were valued exactly the same at the current daily rate.

However, over time, most governments did away with “The Gold Standard” and no longer based the value of paper currency on the value of gold. Regardless of this change, people still placed a high value on gold, which has continued to this day.

This is why the value of gold changes daily. You could be sitting on a huge pile of money if you cashed in your gold jewelry, coins, watches, and other such items!

To learn more about “The Gold Standard” and how much gold is worth today, we invite you to continue reading the following infographic. After doing so, if you want to find out the value of your gold or to get the current rates, please feel free to stop by your nearest GEM Pawnbrokers location or call us directly today!

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