Why your gold jewellery costs more than it did last year, and what's c

In late 2023, the spot price of gold in Australian dollars was sitting around $3,000 per troy ounce. As we're writing this in April 2026, it's been trading anywhere from the $6,800 to $7,800 range, with the Perth Mint noting it briefly touched close to AUD $8,000 during January 2026 before correcting.

For context, the World Bank's October 2025 Commodity Markets Outlook described the 2025 annual gold gain as the strongest since the late 1970s, and projected further record highs into 2026.

Here in Australia, the effect is amplified by the exchange rate. When the Australian dollar weakens against the US dollar, the local price of gold rises even when the international price is flat. So Australian jewellers and Australian buyers feel the movement more.

Gold moves when several forces line up, and right now they all are.

Central banks are buying gold at levels we haven't seen in decades. The World Gold Council reported that central banks added more than 1,000 tonnes of gold to their reserves in 2024, and continued buying through 2025, with full-year demand reaching over 800 tonnes. That's more than twice the pre-2022 average. When central banks buy, they're not trading. They're storing wealth for decades, which permanently removes supply from the open market.

Interest rates in the US are expected to fall. Gold doesn't pay interest, so when savings accounts and bonds pay less, gold becomes relatively more attractive. The market is currently pricing in further rate cuts from the US Federal Reserve into 2026, which is part of why prices have stayed elevated.

The US dollar has weakened. Because gold is priced globally in USD, a softer dollar pushes prices up. For Australian buyers, this compounds with our own currency movements.

Geopolitical uncertainty isn't going anywhere. Gold is the thing people reach for when they don't trust the alternatives. Trade tensions, conflict, and general unpredictability have pushed investors and institutions into gold as a safe haven.

J.P. Morgan Global Research has forecasts ranging from $4,500 to $6,000 USD per ounce through 2026. Goldman Sachs has a target of $5,400 USD. In AUD terms, depending on the exchange rate, that's serious territory.

When the raw material doubles in price over two years, every jeweller making their own product in house has to adapt.

For us, the reality is this: we make every piece to order in solid 9ct, 18ct gold and platinum or silver (both which have also seen price rises), and we don't hold large gold inventories. When a customer places an order, we price that piece based on the gold spot on the day the order is confirmed. That keeps our pricing honest, but it also means a ring we quoted at one number in 2024 genuinely costs more to make today, not because we've marked anything up, but because the gold itself costs more.

It also means quoting a piece a customer bought a year or two ago is more expensive. We can absolutely remake an older design, and we're always happy to, but the price will reflect where gold is sitting today, not where it was sitting when the original was made.

Gold has a genuine commodity value, and that value has held and grown over decades. The piece you bought in 2020 is now made from a material worth considerably more than it was when you bought it.

That doesn't mean gold jewellery is an investment in the financial sense. We've always said that's not the lens to buy through. What it does mean is that when you buy a piece of solid gold jewellery, you're buying something with tangible value that is normally increasing in value. Even if our taste were to move on, you still hold something of value.

One of the things we've developed over the last year is a custom build program that tracks the gold spot in real time and alerts us when there's meaningful movement in either direction.

What this lets us do is price accurately. When gold moves up, we know. When it moves down, we know, and we can flex our pricing for custom quotes accordingly. Customers may fairly assume that prices only go one way but that isn’t the case.  When the gold drops in price, our quotes do to, we need to be compeitiive and it’s actually simpler to be accurate rather than create a false margin. 

For standard collection pieces on the website, we review and update pricing on a regular cadence rather than live, because daily repricing would be genuinely confusing. But for custom pieces, made-to-order designs we're pricing on the day.

You'll notice some of our pieces, particularly the heavier gold items and certain diamond-heavy designs, are listed as Price on Application rather than with a set price.

There's a practical reason for this. A piece that uses a significant amount of gold is disproportionately affected by spot price movement. A ring with 3 grams of gold moves very differently to a chain with 30 grams of gold when the spot price shifts by 5%. Trying to keep a live price on gold-heavy pieces would mean updating the website constantly, and it could still be out of date by the time you see it.

POA is our way of saying: please reach out, and we'll give you an accurate price for today, based on today's gold pricing.

It’s unclear,  but with  forces driving prices up right now, central bank buying, currency movements, geopolitical tension, interest rate expectations, are structural rather than short-term. Most major banks are forecasting further gains through 2026, with moderation rather than reversal beyond that. But gold does move in cycles, and corrections happen so by quoting daily you can be confident your getting the corfrect rate at the time. 

In terms of the raw gold value, yes, meaningfully more. In terms of what you'd get for it at resale or trade-in, that depends on where you're selling, but the underlying commodity value of the piece has increased.

We wish we could, and we know this is the frustrating part. When gold was at a different price, our quote reflected that. Today's quote reflects today's gold. We can absolutely remake an older design, and we'll do our best to be as competitive as we can on the build, but the gold itself is the major driver of cost.

Because gold has moved. We review our collection pricing regularly to stay accurate. If you had a specific quote in writing from us and you're within the validity period (currently 14 days however this is subject to change), that quote still stands.

We have an upgrade and evolution program for rings and select pieces. Reach out to the team and we'll walk you through how it works for your specific piece.

Yes. Our custom build program alerts us to movement in both directions, and our custom quotes reflect where the market actually is. For collection pricing, we review monthly.

We'd never tell a customer to rush a purchase. Fine jewellery is meant to be considered, and the right time is the right time for you. If you’re purchasing gold when it’s expensive it does also mean you’ll get a good price on selling unwanted or damaged gold pieces so chat to us about our recycling program that supports our commitment to using recycled gold, silver and platinum.