Precious Metals Information
Nearly 2,000 years ago Aristotle laid out what characteristics make for good money.
According to Aristotle:
It must be durable.
It must be portable.
It must be divisible.
It must be consistent.
It must have intrinsic value.
So it's no accident then that the most common basis for money - in all of human history - has been gold.
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So Just How Much Gold Is There in the World..?
Even with modern technology gold is still incredibly difficult to find.
In total about 160,000 tonnes of gold have been taken out of the Earth so far...
That 160,000 tonnes is less than you might think.
Formed into a single gold cube it wouldn’t quite cover a tennis court.
In fact it would be 2 metres short. But that’s all the gold in the world.
Gold is being mined at about 2,600 tonnes a year, so the above ground supply is expanding at 1.6% per annum. This newly mined supply means the world's cube of gold -
currently 20.2 metres across - is growing by just 11 cm per year.
All the world's gold will cover a tennis court when the above ground stock is 205,000 tonnes.
This will be some time around 2025.
205,000 tonnes is approximately the sum of the current above ground stocks (approximately 160,000 tonnes) plus the aggregate un-mined known reserves of all the world's gold mining companies (approximately 45,000 tonnes).
That's all the world's gold - both above ground, and known about but still underground...
|  The History of Platinum re Gold
Although platinum is regarded as a "new" metal in its present form, it has a long history. Ancient Egyptians and Pre-Columbian Indian civilizations already valued it as a very important element. The "modern" discovery of platinum is attributed to Spanish conquerors in the 17th century. Actually the name platinum was given by the Spanish word, platina, meaning little silver. Spaniards had discovered alluvial deposits of the rare white metal when they were mining in search for gold in the Choco region in Colombia. Paradoxically, they considered platinum as a nuisance for their mining of gold. |
  | UK Gold Hallmarks To the Left<<< are the most common marks you are likely to find on UK manufactured jewellery. The number denoting gold purity relates to the carat and gold content as follows: Hallmarks Most gold jewellery is hallmarked and depending on the country of origin this mark may give you information about who made it, when it was made, where it was assayed, and how pure it is. This page currently undergoing updating process... Please contact us for current product information. |
Gold Information and Background In medieval times, gold was often seen as beneficial for the health, in the belief that something that rare and beautiful could not be anything but healthy. Even some modern esotericists and forms of alternative medicine assign metallic gold a healing power. Some gold salts do have anti-inflammatory properties and are used as pharmaceuticals in the treatment of arthritis and other similar conditions. However, only salts and radioisotopes of gold are of pharmacological value, as elemental (metallic) gold is inert to all chemicals it encounters inside the body. Gold leaf, flake or dust is used on and in some gourmet foodstuffs, notably sweets and drinks as decorative ingredient. Gold flake was used by the nobility in Medieval Europe as a decoration in foodstuffs and drinks, in the form of leaf, flakes or dust, either to demonstrate the host's wealth or in the belief that something that valuable and rare must be beneficial for one's health. Gold solder is used for joining the components of gold jewelry by high-temperature hard soldering or brazing. If the work is to be of hallmarking quality, gold solder must match the carat weight of the work, and alloy formulas are manufactured in most industry-standard carat weights to color match yellow and white gold. Gold solder is usually made in at least three melting-point ranges referred to as Easy, Medium and Hard. By using the hard, high-melting point solder first, followed by solders with progressively lower melting points, goldsmiths can assemble complex items with several separate soldered joints. Gold can be used in food and has the E Number 175. Goldwasser (English: Goldwater) is a traditional herbal liqueur produced in Gdańsk, Poland, and Schwabach, Germany, and contains flakes of gold leaf. There are also some expensive (~$1000) cocktails which contain flakes of gold leaf. However, since metallic gold is inert to all body chemistry, it adds no taste nor has it any other nutritional effect and leaves the body unaltered. Dentistry. Gold alloys are used in restorative dentistry, especially in tooth restorations, such as crowns and permanent bridges. The gold alloys' slight malleability facilitates the creation of a superior molar mating surface with other teeth and produces results that are generally more satisfactory than those produced by the creation of porcelain crowns. The use of gold crowns in more prominent teeth such as incisors is favored in some cultures and discouraged in others. Gold can be made into thread and used in embroidery. Gold is ductile and malleable, meaning it can be drawn into very thin wire and can be beaten into very thin sheets known as gold leaf. Gold produces a deep, intense red color when used as a coloring agent in cranberry glass. In photography, gold toners are used to shift the color of silver bromide black and white prints towards brown or blue tones, or to increase their stability. Used on sepia-toned prints, gold toners produce red tones. Kodak publish formulas for several types of gold toners, which use gold as the chloride (Kodak, 2006). Electronics. The concentration of free electrons in gold metal is 5.90×1022 cm-3. Gold is highly conductive to electricity, and has been used for electrical wiring in some high energy applications (silver is even more conductive per volume, but gold has the advantage of corrosion resistance). For example, gold electrical wires were used during some of the Manhattan Project's atomic experiments, but large high current silver wires were used in the calutron isotope separator magnets in the project. Though gold is attacked by free chlorine, its good conductivity and general resistance to oxidation and corrosion in other environments (including resistance to non-chlorinated acids) has led to its widespread industrial use in the electronic era as a thin layer coating electrical connectors of all kinds, thereby ensuring good connection. For example, gold is used in the connectors of the more expensive electronics cables, such as audio, video and USB cables. The benefit of using gold over other connector metals such as tin in these applications is highly debated. Gold connectors are often criticized by audio-visual experts as unnecessary for most consumers and seen as simply a marketing ploy. However, the use of gold in other applications in electronic sliding contacts in highly humid or corrosive atmospheres, and in use for contacts with a very high failure cost (certain computers, communications equipment, spacecraft, jet aircraft engines) remains very common, and is unlikely to be replaced in the near future by any other metal. Besides sliding electrical contacts, gold is also used in electrical contacts because of its resistance to corrosion, electrical conductivity, ductility and lack of toxicity.Switch contacts are generally subjected to more intense corrosion stress than are sliding contacts. Colloidal gold (colloidal sols of gold nanoparticles) in water are intensely red-colored, and can be made with tightly-controlled particle sizes up to a few tens of nm across by reduction of gold chloride with citrate or ascorbate ions. Colloidal gold is used in research applications in medicine, biology and materials science. The technique of immunogold labeling exploits the ability of the gold particles to adsorb protein molecules onto their surfaces. Colloidal gold particles coated with specific antibodies can be used as probes for the presence and position of antigens on the surfaces of cells (Faulk and Taylor 1979). In ultrathin sections of tissues viewed by electron microscopy, the immunogold labels appear as extremely dense round spots at the position of the antigen (Roth et al. 1980). Colloidal gold is also the form of gold used as gold paint on ceramics prior to firing. Gold, or alloys of gold and palladium, are applied as conductive coating to biological specimens and other non-conducting materials such as plastics and glass to be viewed in a scanning electron microscope. The coating, which is usually applied by sputtering with an argon plasma, has a triple role in this application. Gold's very high electrical conductivity drains electrical charge to earth, and it’s very high density provides stopping power for electrons in the SEM's electron beam, helping to limit the depth to which the electron beam penetrates the specimen. This improves definition of the position and topography of the specimen surface and increases the spatial resolution of the image. Gold also produces a high output of secondary electrons when irradiated by an electron beam, and these low-energy electrons are the most commonly-used signal source used in the scanning electron microscope. Many competitions, and honors, such as the Olympics and the Nobel Prize, award a gold medal to the winner. As gold is a good reflector of electromagnetic radiation such as infrared and visible light as well as radio waves, it is used for the protective coatings on many artificial satellites, in infrared protective faceplates in thermal protection suits and astronauts' helmets and in electronic warfare planes like the EA-6B Prowler. Gold is used as the reflective layer on some high-end CDs. The isotope gold-198, (half-life: 2.7 days) is used in some cancer treatments and for treating other diseases. Automobiles may use gold for heat insulation. McLaren uses gold foil in the engine compartment of its F1 model. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Social Class Information: Social class refers to the hierarchical distinctions (or stratification) between individuals or groups in societies or cultures. Usually individuals are grouped into classes based on their economic positions and similar political and economic interests within the stratification system. Most societies, especially nation states, seem to have some notion of social class. However, class is not a universal phenomenon. Many hunter-gatherer societies do not have social classes, often lack permanent leaders, and actively avoid dividing their members into hierarchical power structures. The factors that determine class vary widely from one society to another. Even within a society, different people or groups may have very different ideas about what makes one "higher" or "lower" in the social hierarchy. Some questions frequently asked when trying to define class include 1) the most important criteria in distinguishing classes, 2) the number of class divisions that exist, 3) the extent to which individuals recognize these divisions if they are to be meaningful, and 4) whether or not class divisions even exist in the US and other industrial societies. The theoretical debate over the definition of class remains an important one today. Sociologist Dennis Wrong defines class in two ways - realist and nominalist. The realist definition relies on clear class boundaries to which people adhere in order to create social groupings. They identify themselves with a particular class and interact mainly with people in this class. The nominalist definition of class focuses on the characteristics that people share in a given class - education, occupation, etc. Class is therefore determined not by the group in which you place yourself or the people you interact with, but rather by these common characteristics. The most basic class distinction between the two groups is between the powerful and the powerless. People in social classes with greater power attempt to cement their own positions in society and maintain their ranking above the lower social classes in the social hierarchy. Social classes with a great deal of power are usually viewed as elites, at least within their own societies. In the less complex societies, power/class hierarchies may or may not exist. | Current Gold Price Info
Gold Coins InfoShort History of Gold Sovereigns The Gold Sovereign was first issued in 1489 for Henry VII of England. While the coin typically had a nominal value of one pound sterling or 20 shillings, the Sovereign was primarily an official piece of bullion with no mark of value anywhere on the coin itself. The name "sovereign" comes from its majestic and impressive size and the portraiture. The earliest showed the King facing, seated on a throne, while the reverse shows the Royal coat of arms on a shield surrounded by a Tudor double rose. Short History of the Kruggerand The Krugerrand was first minted in 1967 in order to help market South African gold. The coins have legal tender status in South Africa but are not actually used as currency. The Krugerrand was the first bullion coin that could be used as legal tender at the market value of its face gold content. Earlier gold coins such as the gold sovereign had a tender value in currency engraved on their face which could differ significantly from their market value. The Krugerrand was the first gold coin to contain precisely one ounce of fine gold and was intended to provide a vehicle for the private ownership of gold. Since the Krugerrand is minted from gold alloy that is 91.67 percent pure (22 karats), the actual weight of a "one ounce" coin is 1.0909 troy ounces (33.93 g), to provide one troy ounce of pure gold. The remainder of the coin's mass is made up of copper (2.826 grams), giving the Krugerrand a more orange appearance than silver-alloyed gold coins. Alloys are used to make gold coins harder and more durable, so they can resist scratches and dents during handling. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
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