Gold is a soft, dense and shiny metal. Its bright yellow color makes it a highly attractive metal. Besides copper, gold is the only other metal that isn’t grey or silver.
For thousands of years, gold has attracted Man’s attraction and has always been associated with power, glory and wealth.
Gold’s association with the gods, power, glory, and with wealth itself are common to many cultures throughout the world. In the course of every person’s lifetime, gold has always been seen in association with something or someone divine or powerful.
Throughout history and across cultures, gold has adorned countless temples and cathedrals. The crowns of kings were made of gold. Top athletes compete in the Olympics for gold medals. In the past, even the money used to buy the things the heart desire was made of gold.
Man’s attraction to gold is psychological (perhaps even instinctive) and cannot be explained away. Humans will continue to be awed by gold and instinctly want to hoard as much gold as possible.
History of Gold
Discovered in streams as shiny yellow nuggets all over the world, gold is no doubt the first metal known to mankind. Its beauty, brilliance and luster, combined with its highly malleable and ductile nature made it easy to work with and inevitably, gold became a material of choice to make beautiful ornaments since thousands of years ago. To top all that, works of art made of gold are resistant to tarnish and last forever.
In 1922, when British archeologist Howard Carter discovered the tomb of King Tutankhamen, the Egyptian boy-king who reigned from 1361 B.C. to 1352 B.C., a solid gold coffin 3 millimetres thick that weighed 242 pounds was found among a huge collection of perfectly preserved golden treasures.
Being the ultimate commodity valued by all, gold was also a natural choice for use as money. The first known use of gold as money was in 550 B.C. when Croesus, King of Lydia (presently western Turkey), ordered the minting of 98% pure gold coins.
In America, gold was used as money until 1971 when President Nixon took America off the Bretton Woods system and henceforth the US dollar was no longer backed by gold.
Gold Production
For millennia, people have been digging for gold. While gold is rare, it can be found in many places across the world in every continent. While man has been extracting gold from the Earth for more than 6000 years, only about 130,000 metric tonnes have actually been produced. If all that gold were put together in one place, it would only fill a volume the size of a cube 19 meters long on all sides.
Top 5 Gold Producing Countries
- South Africa
- United States
- Australia
- China
- Russia
Precious Metals Investment Guide
Learn everything about gold, silver, platinum and palladium and discover the various ways of investing in these precious metals.
Gold
Gold’s association with the gods, power, glory, and with wealth itself are common to many cultures throughout the world. In the course of every person’s lifetime, gold has always been seen in association with something or someone divine or powerful.
To learn more about gold and the various ways of investing in gold, read our Gold Bullion Investing Guide
Platinum
Platinum’s many important applications and together with the fact that the metal is extremely rare makes this noble metal the priciest and most valuable of all precious metals.
To learn more about platinum and the various methods of investing in platinum, read our Platinum Investing Guide.
Silver
Silver is an attractive white metal with many unique properties, making it a versatile material suitable for a wide variety of applications. Although silver has lost its once important role as a monetary metal, technological advances in the past century have created many uses for this precious metal, making silver an important industrial commodity in the modern world.
For general tips & advice on how to invest in silver, see our Basic Guide to Investing in Silver.
Palladium
Like platinum, palladium has excellent catalytics properties and are often used as catalyst, such as in catalytic converters on automobiles, organic chemistry, and other coupling reactions.
Bullion Coins
One of the best ways to invest in precious metals is to buy bullion coins. They are easy to store, relatively cheap and sells for only a small premium over the spot price.