The calculator answers a single question: if you had invested a sum in gold — or in stocks, housing, bonds, or simply held cash — in any year from 1928 to 2025, what would it be worth today? Every figure traces to a published, authoritative source, and the assumptions are deliberately simple so the comparison stays fair.
The five assets and their sources
- Gold — annual-average nominal price in US dollars per troy ounce, from the MeasuringWorth series compiled by Lawrence Officer and Samuel Williamson — the same validated dataset behind our 768-year price history and every per-year page, so all of our surfaces quote identical figures. The price is fixed at $20.67 and then $35 an ounce during the gold-standard and Bretton Woods eras, and free-floating thereafter; figures cross-check against the World Gold Council and LBMA. This is the bullion price only: it includes no dealer premiums and no storage costs.
- S&P 500 — total return, with dividends reinvested, from Professor Aswath Damodaran's historical returns dataset (NYU Stern). Using total return rather than the price index alone is essential: dividends are a large share of equities' long-run return, and leaving them out would unfairly understate stocks.
- US Housing — the Shiller / S&P Case-Shiller national home-price index. This is a price index for residential real estate. It does not include rental income, nor does it subtract maintenance, property taxes or transaction costs — so it captures price appreciation only.
- 10-Year Treasuries — total return (coupon income plus price change, reinvested) on the 10-year US Treasury, also from the Damodaran dataset.
- Cash — non-interest-bearing US dollars. Cash earns nothing; its nominal value never changes, and its real value is eroded entirely by inflation. This is the deliberately stark baseline that shows the cost of holding money under the mattress.
Real returns and inflation
Inflation is measured by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), annual average. A real return is the nominal return divided by the change in the CPI over the same period — what your money grew to after accounting for the rising cost of living. Real return is the default view because it is the more honest comparison: a tenfold nominal gain over fifty years of high inflation may be no gain at all in purchasing power. The nominal toggle shows returns before inflation, which exposes the inflation gap as its own lesson.
What we deliberately leave out
The calculator omits taxes, transaction costs and fees on every asset. These vary enormously by jurisdiction, account type and investor, and including them would require assumptions that reduce comparability and clutter the result. The figures therefore represent gross, pre-tax, pre-cost returns — useful for comparing assets on equal footing, not a personalized forecast. We also show no cryptocurrencies, commodities or foreign equities: the aim is a clean comparison among the assets a long-term saver actually weighs against gold.
Conventions and limits
"Bought in year Y" means invested at that year's annual figure and held to the latest year's annual figure. Annual averages are used throughout rather than single-day prices, which smooths out the noise of picking an exact purchase date. The series begins in 1928, the cleanest year from which all five assets have continuous, authoritative coverage — which also captures the 1929 crash. This is historical data only: nothing here is a prediction, and past performance is not a guarantee of future results.
In short
Real, gross returns on five assets, 1928–2025, from the World Gold Council, NYU Stern (Damodaran), Case-Shiller and the BLS. No fees, no taxes, no hype — just the long record.
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