There is no single gold price. Spot gold is a continuously traded over-the-counter price for unallocated metal, the LBMA Gold Price is a twice-daily London auction benchmark used for settlement, futures trade a dated contract, and physical coins and bars trade at a premium over spot that covers fabrication, distribution and dealer margin.
There is no single gold price. Spot gold is a continuously traded over-the-counter price for unallocated metal quoted in US dollars per troy ounce, the LBMA Gold Price is a benchmark set by electronic auction twice each London business day at 10:30 and 15:00, gold futures trade a dated exchange contract that includes the cost of carry, and physical coins and bars trade at a premium over spot.
Gold is priced per troy ounce of 31.1035 grams. Premiums over spot fall as unit size rises, so small bars cost far more per ounce of contained gold than kilobars, and the round-trip cost of buying and selling physical metal is what makes it a multi-year holding rather than a short-term trade.
For owners, the useful framing is that gold is a non-yielding asset priced in dollars, competing with the real return on cash and bonds. The month-end correlation between gold and the 10-year real yield is about -0.27 — a real tilt, but far too weak to treat as a mechanism.