Researchers: We Have Passed Peak Gold

http://benthamopen.com/togeoj/articles/V004/29TOGEOJ.pdf

Relative to the current cumulative gold production of 157,000 to 180,000 tons, both scenarios show that up to now more than 50% of the hypothetically available gold has already been mined... It is further concluded that 2001 may have been the peak-gold year with a production of 2,600 tons of gold''