Gold fever spreads as record-high prices continue

Gold is having a moment. Feeling the economic pinch, Americans are pawning their gold or buying as a hedge against inflation.

DENVER ‒ Sloshing chilly river water around his black plastic pan, Kevin Singel tilted it this way and that, catching the sun, looking for a telltale glint: flecks of gold.

"Right there," exclaimed the longtime prospector and guidebook author. "We got two this time."

Record-high prices are driving a renewed interest in gold across the United States. Some families feeling the economic pinch are selling jewelry at pawnshops. Others are buying it as a fear-based hedge against inflation. The U.S. government has bought more than $1 billion worth in the past year ‒ and famously gold-loving President Donald Trump has adorned the Oval Office with it.

Singel likes to go find it himself. On the South Platte River, the gold flakes wash down from deposits high in the Rocky Mountains, carried down each spring by the rush of melting snow.

On a recent day on the river's gravel bank in sight of Denver's skyscrapers, Singel found speck after speck of gold, sucking it out of his pan with an eyedropper. Each piece was the size of a grain of sand ‒ a lustrous grain of sand that's almost twice as heavy as a similarly sized fleck of lead. Some days, he works at his richer claim near a Colorado ski resort, where a hard day of shoveling, sifting and sluicing gravel can earn him $30.