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People buying gold.
Waterlily
Member UncommonPosts: 3,105
Buying gold during an economic crisis, or ahead of an economic crisis.
This seems counterproductive to me, how much value will gold really have during an economic collapse?
Very few people will find gold or jewelry on their list of priorities. Shelter, food, transportation and basic living commodities will be in high demand, but not gold.
So how are you protecting yourself by buying gold when the demand for gold will be very low during a real economic collapse.
You'll have your shiny gold yes, but no bank or individual will want to buy it.
Any thoughts?
Comments
I think a scenario where gold is value-less is pretty farfetched, because if gold isn't accepted as currency, then we wouldn't have any type of currency at all. If that ever happens, then gold with be the farthest thing from anyone's mind. Heck, even the Fallout world, gold had value.
My computer chips are made of gold. And my teeth.
the point of buying gold is that it retains value. Money is really just a symbol of an ownership of gold. It's a lot easier to carry around a wallet full of cash than a bar of gold. Since money is a representation, how much gold the money is worth can change, but basically the concept of economy and trade would need to dissapear for gold to lose it's value.
member of imminst.org
why does people value gold si much? its just a mineral! i bet our ancestors didnt payed too much attention on gold before.. when did gold started to have value? i think strong people before justed planted on the minds of other people that gold has high value, like kings..who made them king?
Wow. I will say nothing more.
Medium of monetary exchange
In various countries, gold is used as a standard for monetary exchange, in coinage and in jewelry. 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.
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 and British gold sovereign continue to be made at 22k, on historical tradition. The Canadian Gold Maple Leaf coin contains the highest purity gold of any popular bullion coin, at 99.999% (.99999 fine). 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.
Today, gold has fallen out of favor for use in coins made for general circulation.
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 jewellery 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 and 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.
The 220 kg gold brick displayed in Chinkuashi Gold Museum, Taiwan.
Other
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.[3] 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 (German: "Goldwater") is a traditional herbal liqueur produced in Gda?sk, Poland, and Schwabach, Germany, and contains flakes of gold leaf. There are also some expensive (~$1000) cocktails which contain flakes of gold leaf[citation needed]. 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.[4] 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 its 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.[5]
Automobiles may use gold for heat insulation. McLaren uses gold foil in the engine compartment of its F1 model.[6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold
And money is just paper. Gold is a representation of wealth, not an actual valuable commodity like food or clothing. If representation didn't mean anything, then we would still be on the bartering system, or making/ hunting our own food and supplies. Not everyone is skilled enough to do this, so monetary system gives us a medium of consistency.