2026-06-20 · tonnes of above-ground gold
Most gold sits in jewelry — not vaults
People wear more gold than central banks store.
Gold's image is vaults and bullion bars, but the biggest stash is worn, not stored: 46% of the world's roughly 212,000 tonnes of above-ground gold is jewelry. Private investment and central-bank reserves hold another 34%, leaving 20% for industry and other uses. The real vault, it turns out, is the jewelry box.
1 cell = 212 tonnes of above-ground gold (0.1% of above-ground gold stocks) · 1,000 cells
Context
The split comes from the World Gold Council's above-ground stock estimates, updated quarterly; this grid uses 2026 data. Because gold is virtually indestructible, almost everything ever mined — around two-thirds of it since 1950 — still exists in some form.
Scale is the surprise: by the council's own math, all the gold ever mined would fit into a cube roughly 22.6 metres on each side — a small volume for a stock worth trillions of dollars.
Future supply is finite too: the World Gold Council counts roughly 61,000 tonnes of below-ground reserves plus about 114,400 tonnes of resources — together still less than the metal already above ground.
World Gold Council above-ground stocks split.
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Credit this grid as Inagrid — https://inagrid.com/e/2026-06-20-gold-reserves