Possibly the world’s most stable currency!
Gold is one of the oldest metals used by humans and was originally found in alluvial deposits. Gold mining can be traced back to 2500BC, when Egyptians mined the mineral to set into jewellery.
Today the largest gold mines in the world are in South Africa, China Australia and the USA.
Gold weight is measured in “Troy” ounces. These weigh more than a normal ounce, with just 12 troy ounces equalling a pound. When you see the price of gold being quoted in a newspaper or on the evening news, it is the current price for one troy ounce of pure gold.
Over the past seven years, gold has risen from around $300 per troy ounce to over $1500. Obviously jewellery should be purchased primarily because it is beautiful. However, as gold can always be melted and re-sold, all pieces of gold jewellery will always retain an inherent value.
Many people feel that gold is a good investment because when economical times are good they can wear their jewellery, and when times are hard, gold prices are normally at their highest.
Around 65 to 70% of processed gold is used in jewellery, with the remainder being used by industry. The most malleable of all metals. Just one small gram of gold can be beaten into a sheet of one square metre, measuring just 4 millionths of an inch thick. It can be made so thin it becomes transparent and is often used to tint glass windows.
Other uses include electrical circuits and wiring; just one ounce can be stretched up to 40 miles before it breaks.
I read recently that over 98% of all of the gold ever mined on our planet is believed to still be in circulation today. As gold effectively acts as a currency and can easily be melted down and converted to cash, this is the main reason why there is so little heritage jewellery that has survived the centuries. It’s not that gold is not durable; it is just the case that very few pieces have survived the various depressions and recessions. Once gold pieces are converted to cash they are normally melted, sold as bullion and then eventually resold to jewellers to manufacture back into jewellery. There is every chance that somebody reading this book is wearing an item of gold jewellery, from which a portion of the metal in the piece was once worn by royalty. I wonder what the history is of the piece you are wearing right now!
For jewellery purposes, gold is usually annealed with other metals to increase its sturdiness (pure gold only registers 2.75 on the mohs scale). To do this it has to be heated to over 1337 degrees Kelvin (2,063 Fahrenheit) and then annealed with harder metals such as copper, silver, platinum or nickel.
The minimum purity for Gold in the UK, and by far the most popular in terms of volume, is 9k (37.5% pure). In Germany, 8k Gold is the minimum legal standard, whilst in America it is 10k.
In the UK it is a legal requirement for anyone selling gold over one gram in weight to ensure that it is officially hallmarked. However, if you are abroad you need to be careful as very few other countries have a hallmarking act: be especially diligent in holiday resorts as imitation gold is all too often sold.
In medieval times gold was considered good for your health, following the belief that something so beautiful and rare had to be good for you.
