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gold mines and gold nuggets

gold coins

Gold Coins
A gold coin is a coin made mostly or entirely of gold. Gold has been used for coins practically since the invention of coinage, originally because of gold's intrinsic value. In modern times, most gold coins are intended either to be sold to collectors, or to be used as bullion coins — coins whose nominal value is irrelevant and which serve primarily as a method of investing in gold.

History

The first gold coins in history were coined by Egyptian Pharaohs around 2,700 BC. These gold coins, of variable purity, were used primarily as gifts and not for commerce. Several centuries later, King Croesus, the fabulously rich ruler of Lydia (560–546 BC), began issuing gold coins, with a standardised purity, for general circulation. King Croesus' gold coins follow the first silver coins that were minted by King Pheidon of Argos around 700 BC. The Ying Yuan was another gold coin minted during this time by the Chinese in the 6th or 5th century BC. Larger units of monetary value and exchange such as the talent were the ancient equivalents of the modern 400-troy-ounce "good delivery" gold bullion bar.

Gold coins then had a very long period as a primary form of money, only falling into disuse in the early 20th century. Most of the world stopped making gold coins as currency by 1933, as countries switched from the gold standard due to hoarding during the worldwide economic crisis of the Great Depression. In the United States, 1933's Executive Order 6102 forbade the hoarding of gold and was followed by a devaluation of the dollar relative to gold, although the United States did not completely uncouple the dollar from the value of gold until 1971

Gold-colored coins have made a comeback in many currencies. However, "gold coin" (in numismatic terminology) always refers to a coin that is (more or less) made of (real) gold, and does not include coins made of manganese brass or other alloys. Furthermore, many countries continue to make legal tender gold coins, but these are primarily meant for collectors and investment purposes and are not meant for circulation.

Collector coins

Many factors determine the value of a gold coin, such as its rarity, age, condition and the number originally minted. Gold coins coveted by collectors include the Aureus, Solidus and Spur Ryal.

In July 2002, a very rare $20 1933 Double Eagle gold coin sold for a record $7,590,020 at Sotheby's, making it by far the most valuable coin ever sold to date. In early 1933, more than 445,000 Double Eagle coins had been struck by the U.S. Mint, but most of these were surrendered and melted down following Executive Order 6102. Only a few coins managed to survive.

In 2007 the Royal Canadian Mint produced a 100 kg gold coin with a face value of $1,000,000, though the gold content was worth over $2 million at the time. It measures 50 cm in diameter and is 3 cm thick. It was intended as a one-off to promote a new line of Canadian Gold Maple Leaf coins, but after several interested buyers came forward the mint announced it would manufacture them as ordered and sell them for between $2.5 million and $3 million. As of May 3 2007 there were five confirmed orders. Austria had previously produced a 37 cm diameter 31 kg Philharmonic gold coin with a face value of €100,000.

In October 4, 2007, David Albanese (president of Albanese Rare Coins) stated that a $10, 1804-dated eagle coin (made for President Andrew Jackson as a diplomatic gift) was sold to an anonymous private collector for $5 million.

GOLD BARS

Gold bars:
A gold bar is a gold ingot which may be produced in many different types, weights and categories.

Although gold bars come in many forms, in movies we generally see the "400 ounce London Good Delivery" bar (12.44 kg), held by most central banks. They are each worth about $382,400 (400oz × $956/oz, as of 11 June 2009).

Types
Gold bars are classified into two different types—cast and minted—based on their method of manufacturing . Cast bars are made by pouring molten gold into an ingot mold to help the gold to take a form. Minted bars are made from gold blanks that have been hand cut to the required dimensions from a flat piece of gold. Markings are almost always applied by presses. ChipGold is a relatively new form of gold bar consisting of a small ingot (1-20 grams) in a sealed and certified package the size of a credit card.
1 oz holographic kinebar
Kilobar Web
1 kg cast bar from Indonesian Logam Mulia
Smallbar Web.
100 g minted bar from Indonesian Logam Mulia
Weights and values
One troy ounce = 31.1034768 grams. Thus if gold were at US$850 per ounce, a gold gram would be worth just over US$27.
Note where gold is measured in ounces, these are troy ounces, not the much more common avoirdupois ounce which is used for measuring weights in food etc. An avoirdupois ounce is lighter than a troy ounce. One avoirdupois ounce = 28.349523125 grams.
* One tonne = 1000 kilograms = 32,150.746 troy ounces (value US$30,740,620 as of June 11, 2009).
* One kilogram = 1000 grams = 32.15074656 troy ounces (value US$30,740.62 as of June 11, 2009).
* One tola = 11.6638038 grams (value US$358.553 as of June 11, 2009).
* One tael = 50 grams (value US$1,537.03 as of June 11, 2009).
* TT (Ten Tola) = 117 grams (3.75 oz)
This is the official rate of taels in mainland China since the country went metric. In Taiwan and Hong Kong today a tael is equivalent to 37.429g.
Tola is a traditional Indian measure for the weight of gold and prevalent to this day. Many international gold manufacturers supply tola bars of 999.96 purity
Gold is very dense, 19.3 g/cm³, to the extent that ten million U.S. dollars' worth occupies less than one cubic foot.

GOLD nuggets

source

Gold Nuggets:
A gold nugget is a naturally occurring piece of native gold. Watercourses often concentrate the nuggets and they are recovered by placer mining, but they may also be found in residual deposits where the gold-bearing veins or lodes have decayed. Nuggets are also found in the tailings piles of previous mining operations, especially those left by gold mining dredges.


Composition

They are never pure 24K in composition but rather about 20 to 22K (~about 83% to 92%). Nuggets are also referred to by their "fineness", for example "865 fine" means the nugget is 865 parts per thousand in gold. The common impurities are silver and copper. Nuggets high in silver content are known as "electrum".
Largest discovered gold nugget
The largest gold nugget ever found was the Welcome Stranger, found at Moliagul, Victoria, Australia in 1869 by John Deason and Richard Oates. It weighed gross, over 2,520 troy ounces (78.38 kg) and returned over 2,284 troy ounces (71.04 kg) net. The largest gold nugget still in existence is the Hand of Faith, found in 1980 using a metal detector.











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GOLD

Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. It is a highly sought-after precious metal in jewelry, in sculpture, and for ornamentation since the beginning of recorded history. The metal occurs as nuggets or grains in rocks, in veins and in alluvial deposits. Gold is dense, soft, shiny and the most malleable and ductile pure metal known. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without rusting in air or water. It is one of the coinage metals and formed the basis for the gold standard used before the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971.

At the end of 2006, it was estimated that all the gold ever mined totaled 158,000 tonnes. This can be represented by a cube with an edge length of just 20.2 meters. Modern industrial uses include dentistry and electronics, where gold has traditionally found use because of its good resistance to oxidative corrosion. Chemically, gold is a transition metal and can form trivalent and univalent cations upon solvation. At STP it is attacked by aqua regia (a mixture of acids), forming chloroauric acid and by alkaline solutions of cyanide but not by single acids such as hydrochloric, nitric or sulfuric acids. Gold dissolves in mercury, forming amalgam alloys, but does not react with it. Since gold is insoluble in nitric acid which will dissolve silver and base metals, this is exploited as the basis of the gold refining technique known as "inquartation and parting". Nitric acid has long been used to confirm the presence of gold in items, and this is the origin of the colloquial term "acid test", referring to a gold standard test for genuine value.
Gold is the most malleable and ductile of all metals; a single gram can be beaten into a sheet of one square meter, or an ounce into 300 square feet. Gold leaf can be beaten thin enough to become translucent. The transmitted light appears greenish blue, because gold strongly reflects yellow and red.
Gold readily creates alloys with many other metals. These alloys can be produced to modify the hardness and other metallurgical properties, to control melting point or to create exotic colors (see below). Gold is a good conductor of heat and electricity and reflects infra red radiation strongly. Chemically, it is unaffected by air, moisture and most corrosive reagents, and is therefore well-suited for use in coins and jewelry and as a protective coating on other, more reactive, metals. However, it is not chemically inert. Free halogens will react with gold, and aqua regia dissolves it via formation of chlorine gas which attacks gold to form the chloraurate ion. Gold also dissolves in alkaline solutions of potassium cyanide and in mercury, forming a gold-mercury amalgam.
Common oxidation states of gold include +1 (gold(I) or aurous compounds) and +3 (gold(III) or auric compounds). Gold ions in solution are readily reduced and precipitated out as gold metal by adding any other metal as the reducing agent. The added metal is oxidized and dissolves allowing the gold to be displaced from solution and be recovered as a solid precipitate.
High quality pure metallic gold is tasteless; in keeping with its resistance to corrosion (it is metal ions which confer taste to metals).
In addition, gold is very dense, a cubic meter weighing 19300 kg. By comparison, the density of lead is 11340 kg/m³, and that of the densest element, osmium, is 22610 kg/m³.
Color of gold
Different colors of Ag-Au-Cu alloys
The color of pure gold is metallic yellow. Gold, caesium and copper are the only metallic elements with a natural color other than gray or white. The usual gray color of metals depends on their "electron sea" that is capable of absorbing and re-emitting photons over a wide range of frequencies. Gold reacts differently, depending on subtle relativistic effects that affect the orbitals around gold atoms.
Common colored gold alloys such as rose gold can be created by the addition of various amounts of copper and silver, as indicated in the diagram below. Alloys containing palladium or nickel are also important in commercial jewelry as these produce white gold alloys. Less commonly, addition of manganese, aluminium, iron, indium and other elements can produce more unusual colors of gold for various applications.
Applications
As the metal
Special issue Canadian Gold Maple Leaf coin with the highest purity of any gold coin at a guaranteed 99.999%
Medium of monetary exchange
In various countries, gold was used as a standard for monetary exchange, but this practice has been abandoned with the rise of fiat currency. The last country to back their money with gold was Switzerland, which backed 40% of its value until it joined the International Monetary Fund in 1999. [6] Pure gold is too soft for ordinary use and is typically hardened by alloying with copper or other base metals. The gold content of gold alloys is measured in carats (k), pure gold being designated as 24k.
The 220 kg gold brick displayed in Chinkuashi Gold Museum, Taiwan, Republic of China

Gold coins intended for circulation from 1526 into the 1930s were typically a standard 22k alloy called crown gold, for hardness. Modern collector/investment bullion coins (which do not require good mechanical wear properties) are typically 24k, although the American Gold Eagle, the British gold sovereign and the South African Krugerrand continue to be made at 22k, on historical tradition. The special issue Canadian Gold Maple Leaf coin contains the highest purity gold of any bullion coin, at 99.999% (.99999 fine). The popular issue Canadian Gold Maple Leaf coin has a purity of 99.99%. Several other 99.99% pure gold coins are currently available, including Australia's Gold Kangaroos (first appearing in 1986 as the Australian Gold Nugget, with the kangaroo theme appearing in 1989), the several coins of the Australian Lunar Calendar series, and the Austrian Philharmonic. In 2006, the U.S. Mint began production of the American Buffalo gold bullion coin also at 99.99% purity.

Gold was used as a medium of monetary exchange throughout history together with or instead of other minerals, like silver, salt, and copper. At the beginning of World War I the warring nations went onto a fractional gold standard, inflating their currencies to finance the war effort. After World War II gold was replaced by a system of convertible currency following the Bretton Woods system. Many holders of gold in storage (as bullion coin or bullion) hold it as a hedge against inflation or other economic disruptions. The ISO currency code of gold bullion is XAU.
The examples and perspective in this section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article or discuss the issue on the talk page.

Jewelry
Because of the softness of pure (24k) gold, it is usually alloyed with base metals for use in jewelry, altering its hardness and ductility, melting point, color and other properties. Alloys with lower caratage, typically 22k, 18k, 14k or 10k, contain higher percentages of copper, or other base metals or silver or palladium in the alloy. Copper is the most commonly used base metal, yielding a redder color. Eighteen carat gold containing 25% copper is found in antique and Russian jewelery and has a distinct, though not dominant, copper cast, creating rose gold. Fourteen carat gold-copper alloy is nearly identical in color to certain bronze alloys, and both may be used to produce police, as well as other, badges. Blue gold can be made by alloying with iron and purple gold can be made by alloying with aluminium, although rarely done except in specialized jewelry. Blue gold is more brittle and therefore more difficult to work with when making jewelry. Fourteen and eighteen carat gold alloys with silver alone appear greenish-yellow and are referred to as green gold. White gold alloys can be made with palladium or nickel. White 18 carat gold containing 17.3% nickel, 5.5% zinc and 2.2% copper is silver in appearance. Nickel is toxic, however, and its release from nickel white gold is controlled by legislation in Europe. Alternative white gold alloys are available based on palladium, silver and other white metals (World Gold Council), but the palladium alloys are more expensive than those using nickel. High-carat white gold alloys are far more resistant to corrosion than are either pure silver or sterling silver. The Japanese craft of Mokume-gane exploits the color contrasts between laminated colored gold alloys to produce decorative wood-grain effects.