A quality men’s business suit, priced in ounces of gold, across modern history. The benchmark is informally famous in monetary-history circles: it is reputed that an ounce of gold has bought a quality men’s suit in ancient Rome, in 1920s New York, and today. The chart tests this claim with available data and finds that it is approximately correct — a quality suit has cost roughly one ounce of gold across more than a century of wildly different currency conditions.
Analyst's Note
The men’s-suit benchmark is the most rhetorically powerful single chart in the precious metals canon, and it gets shared in client conversations more than almost any other. The reason it works is that it forces the conversation away from price levels and toward purchasing power: an ounce of gold does the same thing today (buy a suit) that it did a century ago. Headline prices in dollars have risen by a factor of 50; the suit-in-gold ratio has barely moved. For the analytical investor, the chart’s value is conversational and persuasive rather than tactical — it’s the chart to share when the topic is ‘why hold gold’ rather than ‘when to buy gold.’ Used correctly, it changes the entire frame of the precious metals conversation.