Charles Vollum

Charles Vollum (aka Sir Charles) has been involved with computer technology for 45 years. After studying mathematics and computer science at Reed College, he pursued a successful career as a software developer before starting his own computer company, Cogent Research, Inc., to develop and manufacture parallel desktop supercomputers in 1986. Selling and servicing these computers took him all over the world, and allowed him to see first-hand the effects of many currencies and monetary regimes. After selling Cogent Research in 1992, Charles embarked on a new adventure – sailing a 27 foot sailboat singlehanded across the Pacific from North America to New Zealand, visiting many South Pacific Island nations and learning more about the world's money systems. An active investor in gold and silver since 1980, Charles slowly began to realize the importance of having a standard of value not tied to any country's currency and monetary policy – that in fact, rising and falling 'gold prices' were really more accurately viewed as falling and rising 'currency prices', measured against the relative stability of gold. This insight led to the founding of Gold Monocle Group, Ltd, and the creation of the Priced in Gold website in 2007.