What this Gold dataset contains
Each price is the World Bank Pink Sheet's December monthly average of daily Gold spot rates, expressed in nominal U.S. dollars per troy ounce. A monthly average is not a December 31 closing price and may not match a tradable quote from any one venue.
The first published row, 2010, is deliberately labeled as the baseline because this extract does not include a 2009 December value. Returns begin in 2011. The strongest calculated change in the extract is +62.73% in 2025; the weakest is -27.48% in 2013.
Gold price and annual return table
The HTML contains every row without JavaScript. Displayed returns are rounded to two decimal places; the CSV preserves the mechanically calculated percentage to six decimal places.
| Year | Reference period | December average | Year-over-year change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | $1,391 per troy oz | Baseline | |
| 2011 | $1,640 per troy oz | +17.90% | |
| 2012 | $1,685 per troy oz | +2.74% | |
| 2013 | $1,222 per troy oz | -27.48% | |
| 2014 | $1,201 per troy oz | -1.72% | |
| 2015 | $1,076 per troy oz | -10.41% | |
| 2016 | $1,157 per troy oz | +7.53% | |
| 2017 | $1,264 per troy oz | +9.25% | |
| 2018 | $1,250 per troy oz | -1.11% | |
| 2019 | $1,479 per troy oz | +18.32% | |
| 2020 | $1,858 per troy oz | +25.63% | |
| 2021 | $1,790 per troy oz | -3.66% | |
| 2022 | $1,798 per troy oz | +0.45% | |
| 2023 | $2,026 per troy oz | +12.68% | |
| 2024 | $2,648 per troy oz | +30.70% | |
| 2025 | $4,309 per troy oz | +62.73% |
Methodology and return definition
FinanceBase selects the Gold observation whose period is December for each consecutive year in the verified snapshot. For years after the 2010 baseline, the transformation is:
year-over-year return (%) = (current December average / prior December average - 1) x 100
The calculation is price-only. It does not include dealer spreads or premiums, storage, custody, management fees, taxes, inflation, currency conversion or interest. No interpolation is used, and FinanceBase does not replace missing observations. The build rejects a non-consecutive year before publishing the table.
Purchase values are January monthly averages anchored to the first day of the month. Annual and valuation values are monthly averages anchored to the last day of their period; they are not trade-date closes.
Source, adaptation and license
Attribution: World Bank Commodity Price Data (The Pink Sheet), adapted by FinanceBase; licensed CC BY 4.0.
- World Bank Commodity Price Data (The Pink Sheet)
- World Bank Data Catalog record
- Historical monthly workbook used by the verified snapshot
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license
FinanceBase adapted the source by selecting annual December observations and calculating the return column. The stored price observations are not estimated or backfilled. The source may revise its workbook; this page identifies its verification date so later editions can be distinguished.
How to cite this dataset
FinanceBase (2026), "Gold annual December prices and year-over-year returns, 2010-2025," adapted from World Bank Prospects Group Commodity Price Data (The Pink Sheet), https://financebase.org/data/gold-prices-by-year/
Please retain the named underlying source and license when republishing or adapting the file.