Der Massstab

What was it really worth,
measured in gold?

CPI baskets change every few years and every country calculates inflation differently. Gold has been used as a store of value for thousands of years. This tool converts a sum of money from any year into ounces of gold, then reprices it in today's money — so you can compare wages, prices, or savings across decades on a harder yardstick.

Gold price data: annual averages, 1950–2025 · exchange rates: annual averages

Carry an amount through time

Enter an amount, its currency, and the year it's from. See what it's worth today, priced in gold.
Bought this much gold in that year
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Equivalent today, gold-priced
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Compare two incomes directly

e.g. your father's 1975 salary against your own today — both measured in grams of gold rather than currency.
compared with
Amount A
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Amount B
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Gold price over time

Price per troy ounce, log scale. Germany shown in EUR throughout — pre-1999 DM figures converted at the fixed 1.95583 rate.
USA — USD Germany — EUR

Median income, measured in gold

Grams of gold the median income buys. USA: median household income (US Census Bureau). Germany: median gross annual earnings (Stat. Bundesamt); West Germany data pre-1990. Figures are approximate.
USA Germany

How this works

1. Take the amount and look up gold's average price, in the same currency, for that year.
2. Divide → the amount is now expressed in troy ounces of gold.
3. Multiply the ounces by today's gold price (in your target currency) → today's gold-priced equivalent.
Gold and exchange-rate figures here are annual averages baked into the page, not a live feed — good enough for "what was this roughly worth", not for trading or legal/tax use. Use the dedicated "DM — Deutsche Mark" option for real pre-1999 German amounts (e.g. a 1975 salary) — enter the actual Deutschmark figure directly, no manual conversion needed. The EUR option is meant for 1999 onward; it also computes for earlier years via the fixed conversion rate (1 EUR = 1.95583 DEM), but that only makes sense if the amount you're entering is already a retroactively-converted euro figure, which is unusual. Currency conversion only starts in 1950 — for earlier years, choose USD or work in gold ounces directly.

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