The prehistoric–protohistoric archaeology of present-day Hồ Chí Minh City documents a long sequence of settlement, production, exchange, and mortuary practices from the later prehistoric period into the first centuries AD. Gold is a particularly informative component of this record because it is rare, technically demanding to work, and disproportionately associated with burials and personal ornaments. This article re-examines the gold assemblages from Giồng Cá Vồ and Giồng Phệt in Cần Giờ and, following the 2025 administrative reorganization that incorporated the former provinces of Bà Rịa–Vũng Tàu and Bình Dương into Hồ Chí Minh City, brings Giồng Lớn and Phú Chánh more directly into the analytical scope. The study combines typology, manufacturing observations, mortuary context, chronology, regional comparison, and published elemental analyses. At Giồng Cá Vồ and Giồng Phệt, the assemblage is dominated by thin hammered and rolled beads, including gold covered cores, tubular forms, and bamboo-node forms, while Giồng Lớn contains a larger and more diverse mortuary assemblage that includes beads, earrings, gold foils or masks, and an unusual object interpreted by excavators as a linga. Comparative evidence from Sa Huỳnh sites, Khao Sam Kaeo, Noen U-Loke, Cambodia, and Island Southeast Asia places these finds within intensifying late first-millennium BC and early first-millennium AD exchange networks. Published LA-ICP-MS data indicate that sampled Giồng Cá Vồ objects were made from placer gold and share compositional similarities with some samples from Thailand and Bali; however, compositional resemblance is treated here as evidence for network-level connectivity rather than proof of a direct source-to-site trade route. The concentration of gold in funerary contexts indicates high value and differential access, but it does not by itself demonstrate hereditary elites or centralized political control. The article therefore argues that the coastal and estuarine communities of southeastern Vietnam should be understood as active participants in overlapping maritime and riverine networks, while emphasizing the need for calibrated radiocarbon chronologies, contextual sampling, technological microscopy, and expanded reference datasets for gold provenance.