I thought this stunt was done in the 50’s.
Glenn Seaborg, 1951 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, succeeded in transmuting a minute quantity of lead, (possibly en route from bismuth) in 1980 into gold. The experiment was carried out, running particle beams through the Bevalac that took about about $5,000 an hour in costs to run. “It would cost more than 1,000,000,000,000,000 dollars per ounce to produce gold by this experiment,” Seaborg told the Associated Press that year. The going rate for an ounce of gold at the time? About $560.
You beat me to it, and with more details than I could have given off the top of my head. But I remembered that from when it was first in the news.