Uncovering Gold Ownership in America

While polls offer only limited insight into how much gold Americans own, history could give us a better clue.

The statistics of gold ownership in the U.S. are difficult to track. It's known that the nation occupies high spots on the lists of top gold consumers and biggest gold hoarders, but past that point, data is relatively muddled.

Polls show that Americans continue to rank gold highly as an investment, with the metal landing third on a recent list of the best-perceived long-term investments. This data, however, offers only limited insight into how much bullion Americans are buying. Even the U.S. Mint's statistics, which show $1.2 billion worth of gold coins being sold in 2015, does little to inform us about individual purchases.

Writing in the LA Times, James Ledbetter believes that a look at history might give us a better clue of where gold sits with American investors. Despite being illegal to own between 1933 and 1975, gold remained a very popular investment in the country.

When gold was first confiscated in the 1930s, the hoard of privately-owned gold was estimated to be at $1.4 billion, a massive amount that was twice the size of the Bank of England's reserves. After the government tried to  buy up all the remaining gold, the Treasury estimated that $287 million in gold coins still sat with people.

Clearly, Americans didn't want to give up on owning gold despite the administration's threats. As the government couldn't reconcile the high amount of remaining gold coins with their new illegal status, the figure was simply expunged from the books and the gold is thought to have been smuggled out of the country or kept in private collections.

Ledbetter notes that gold retains its secrecy even half a century after a floating currency was established in the U.S., and long after one could argue for the economic and security reasons of being vague about gold hoards.

The secrecy surrounding gold has also given rise to conspiracies involving a lack of physical gold, such as the notion that the Federal Reserve has little to no gold bullion. Yet despite the restrictions in producing accurate estimates, it's safe to assume that 1% to 3% of Americans own gold, although Ledbetter and others believe that the number could be as high as 10%.

These statistics would mean that anywhere between 2.5 million and 25 million of America's citizens own gold. Regardless of the size of individual gold hoards, these numbers underline the importance of gold investment in the country while a closer look could redefine what we know about Western appetite for the metal.