Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Politics and Other Controversies
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
 
Old 10-21-2012, 11:19 PM
 
Location: Tyler, TX
23,666 posts, read 23,982,865 times
Reputation: 14995

Advertisements

Quote:
Originally Posted by Woof View Post
Where have you found a dealer who sells gold at only 2% above the price he paid for it, KrazyKrewe?
$35 over spot - about 2%.

Buy Gold Online | Buy 1 oz APMEX Gold Bars in as Assay Card | APMEX.com

 
Old 10-21-2012, 11:25 PM
 
Location: Tyler, TX
23,666 posts, read 23,982,865 times
Reputation: 14995
Quote:
Originally Posted by KrazeeKrewe View Post
You can buy gold from vending machines for current market price.

Gold Vending
Didn't watch the video (no audio right now), but I live about a mile and a half from one - at the Golden Nugget casino in downtown Las Vegas.

Never checked it out, though. I seriously doubt they sell it for spot - NOTHING goes cheap in a Las Vegas casino, unless they think it'll loosen up your wallet (read: liquor). I'm sure they're charging a nice premium. Novelty is valuable in this town, and an ATM that dispenses real gold is pretty novel.
 
Old 10-21-2012, 11:28 PM
 
Location: State of Superior
8,733 posts, read 15,906,609 times
Reputation: 2869
Quote:
Originally Posted by sanspeur View Post
Bought at $300 to $600, and sold 40 years later for $1000? I'd say you lost a fair amount of money if you factor in inflation. $300 value 40 years ago equates to more than $3,300 value today.
You miss the point, I ,like the vast majority never saved, just did not care, money was only a measure of success. If I had not bought, then put it all away, I would not have had the chance to cash in, when I really needed it in retirement. Listen, I played the commodities market along with Gold and Silver mines on the Toronto exchange, never did recover from those years. I always had plenty of money around, but, it was more fun to spend it anyway I could, I lived in the fast lane a lot of years.
 
Old 10-22-2012, 11:22 AM
 
438 posts, read 1,529,140 times
Reputation: 324
Quote:
Originally Posted by Think4Yourself View Post
This is such an obvious asset bubble.

Also, no, those of you dreaming (no doubt even hoping and praying for...) an economic collapse will not find your gold to be any more valuable then it was in the Warsaw ghetto. Gold has absolutely no intrinsic value and is only really a hedge against inflation and nothing else.

Not that the world is going to collapse any time soon. That's just a fantasy of the raving loon right often with racial over tones as I notice the white power folks seem to talk about it a lot as part of their dream for a supposed coming race war. It's a crock.

Wow really, besides jewelry here's a few things gold is used for. Oh and btw what intrinsic value do dollar bills have? Well I guess you could use it as toliet paper, right?

In Electronics
The most important industrial use of gold is in the manufacture of electronics. Did you know a standard touchtone telephone typically contains 33 gold-plated contacts? Contacts are electroplated with a very thin film of gold. This ‘touch’ of gold on the contact serves a dual purpose. First, it ensures rapid dispersion of heat while protecting it against detrimental tarnishing that typically occurs over the life of the device. Gold is the highly efficient conductor that can carry tiny currents and remain free of corrosion – ensuring a high level of reliability.

A small amount of gold is used in almost every sophisticated electronic device. This includes: cell phones, calculators, personal digital assistants, global positioning system units and other small electronic devices. Most large electronic appliances such as television sets also contain gold.

One challenge with the use of gold in very small quantities in very small devices is loss of the metal from society. Nearly one billion cell phones are produced each year and most of them contain about fifty cents worth of gold. Their average lifetime is under two years and very few are currently being recycled. Although the amount of gold is small in each device, their enormous numbers translate into a lot of un-recycled gold that might otherwise be put to better use.

In Computers
As with other electronic devices, gold is used in many places in the standard desktop or laptop computer. Its ability to rapidly and accurately transmit digital information through the computer and from one component to another requires an efficient and reliable conductor and gold meets these requirements better than any other metal. The importance of high quality and reliable performance justifies its higher cost.

Edge connectors used to mount microprocessor and memory chips onto the motherboard and the plug-and-socket connectors used to attach cables all contain gold. The gold in these components is generally electroplated onto other metals and alloyed with small amounts of nickel or cobalt to increase durability.

Financial Applications: Coinage, Currency and Bullion
Because gold is so highly valued in our society and in such limited supply, it has long been used as a means of exchange or currency. Some estimates put the original transactions dating back as far as 6000 years using pieces of gold or silver. Gold was considered ideally suited for this purpose because its high value, durability, portability and easily divisible into smaller measures

Space & Aeronautics
Spending billions of dollars on a vehicle that will travel on a voyage where maintenance and repair will be nearly impossible means having to rely on dependable materials. Gold is central to safe space travel, for example, more than 40.8 kilograms of gold were used in the US Columbia space shuttle. Without gold, humans would have never landed on the moon. Gold sheets, approximately 0.15mm thick, are used by NASA as a radiation shield to deflect the burning heat of the sun. Without this coating, darker colored parts of the spacecraft would absorb significant amounts of heat and threaten missions and the people aboard them.

Gold is also used as a lubricant between mechanical parts. In the vacuum of space, organic lubricants would volatilize and break down due to the intense radiation. Gold has a very low shear strength so applying thin films between critical moving parts serves as an unexpected lubricant. The gold molecules slip past one another under the forces of friction to provide exceptional lubricant action.

Environmental Uses
Due to its unique chemical and metallurgical properties, gold has a vital role to play in future technologies including water purification, reducing pollution, energy consumption, and diesel emission control.

Water Purification
Chlorinated hydrocarbons are major pollutants of groundwater. Recent research at Rice University's Centre for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology revealed that bimetallic gold-palladium nanoparticles provide an active catalyst to break down trichlorethene (TCE), one of the most common and poisonous groundwater pollutants. TCE has been linked to liver damage, impaired pregnancy and cancer. This nanomaterial opens up tremendous opportunities in groundwater clean-up. In other work, researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology, have proven that gold nanoparticles, incorporated into a point-of-use water purification device, can be effective in the capture and removal of halocarbon-based pesticides from drinking water.

Mercury Control
The US is relying increasingly on the use of coal to produce electrical power and significant levels of mercury occur in the effluent from these power plants. Control of mercury, which has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease and autism, is expected to be achieved in the US by imposed limits on mercury emissions from coal-fired boilers in the utilities industry. One method to increase mercury removal is to introduce a catalyst to enhance the oxidation of mercury and gold catalysts are proving to be very promising. Full scale trials are currently underway.

Diesel Emission Control
The recent announcement by U.S. company Nanostellar that they have developed an automotive pollution control catalyst for diesel engines that contains gold, as well as the traditional platinum and palladium ingredients, is a major step-forward in cost effective emission control.

'Green' Chemistry
Green chemistry, also called sustainable chemistry, is a chemical philosophy encouraging the design of industrial chemicals and processes that reduce or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances. The use of gold as a catalyst has a major role to play in green chemistry.

Most industrial oxidation processes tend to use chlorine or organic peroxides.

Fuel Cells
Fuel cells using hydrogen fuel are a promising clean energy source for automobiles, homes, and mobile devices. At present, platinum is generally used as a catalyst in the fuel cell. However, platinum is an extremely expensive precious metal, therefore, an important R & D theme in the fuel cell industry is reduction of material cost by minimizing use of platinum. In 2008, leading Japanese manufacturer Hitachi Maxell announced development of a new catalyst based on gold-platinum nanoparticles - see http://www.maxell.co.jp/e/release/20080327.html for more information. This success represents a large step closer to the practical use of fuel cells for applications requiring large current, such as power sources for automobiles and homes.


In Modern Medicine
Gold is used in medicine to treat rheumatoid arthritis, liver, eye and ear diseases, as well as depression. It is used in a group of drugs used to slow down rheumatoid arthritis known as DMARDs. Also, in the last few decades the properties of gold compounds have been of interest as potential cancer treatments. Particles of a radioactive gold isotope are implanted in tissues to serve as a radiation source in the treatment of certain cancers.

Radioactive gold is also used in many surgical instruments, electronic equipment and life-support devices. Gold is nonreactive in the instruments and is highly reliable in the electronic equipment and life-support devices.

In Dentistry
Gold's malleability, resistance to corrosion and non allergenic properties make it perfect for dental use, although its softness means that it needs to be alloyed to reduce wearing. The most common companion metals are platinum, silver and copper.

Gold is known to have been used in dentistry as early as 700 B.C. Etruscan "dentists" used gold wire to fasten replacement teeth into the mouths of their patients. Gold was probably used to fill cavities in ancient times as well, however there is no documentation or archaeological evidence for this use of gold until a little over a thousand years ago.

Gold was much more generously used in dentistry up until the late 1970's. Its sharp price escalation motivated the search for and development of substitute materials. However, the amount of gold used in dentistry is starting to rise again stemming from the concerns that less inert metals might have an adverse effect on long-term health.
 
Old 10-22-2012, 12:50 PM
 
Location: State of Superior
8,733 posts, read 15,906,609 times
Reputation: 2869
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lost Leaf View Post
Wow really, besides jewelry here's a few things gold is used for. Oh and btw what intrinsic value do dollar bills have? Well I guess you could use it as toliet paper, right?

In Electronics
The most important industrial use of gold is in the manufacture of electronics. Did you know a standard touchtone telephone typically contains 33 gold-plated contacts? Contacts are electroplated with a very thin film of gold. This ‘touch’ of gold on the contact serves a dual purpose. First, it ensures rapid dispersion of heat while protecting it against detrimental tarnishing that typically occurs over the life of the device. Gold is the highly efficient conductor that can carry tiny currents and remain free of corrosion – ensuring a high level of reliability.

A small amount of gold is used in almost every sophisticated electronic device. This includes: cell phones, calculators, personal digital assistants, global positioning system units and other small electronic devices. Most large electronic appliances such as television sets also contain gold.

One challenge with the use of gold in very small quantities in very small devices is loss of the metal from society. Nearly one billion cell phones are produced each year and most of them contain about fifty cents worth of gold. Their average lifetime is under two years and very few are currently being recycled. Although the amount of gold is small in each device, their enormous numbers translate into a lot of un-recycled gold that might otherwise be put to better use.

In Computers
As with other electronic devices, gold is used in many places in the standard desktop or laptop computer. Its ability to rapidly and accurately transmit digital information through the computer and from one component to another requires an efficient and reliable conductor and gold meets these requirements better than any other metal. The importance of high quality and reliable performance justifies its higher cost.

Edge connectors used to mount microprocessor and memory chips onto the motherboard and the plug-and-socket connectors used to attach cables all contain gold. The gold in these components is generally electroplated onto other metals and alloyed with small amounts of nickel or cobalt to increase durability.

Financial Applications: Coinage, Currency and Bullion
Because gold is so highly valued in our society and in such limited supply, it has long been used as a means of exchange or currency. Some estimates put the original transactions dating back as far as 6000 years using pieces of gold or silver. Gold was considered ideally suited for this purpose because its high value, durability, portability and easily divisible into smaller measures

Space & Aeronautics
Spending billions of dollars on a vehicle that will travel on a voyage where maintenance and repair will be nearly impossible means having to rely on dependable materials. Gold is central to safe space travel, for example, more than 40.8 kilograms of gold were used in the US Columbia space shuttle. Without gold, humans would have never landed on the moon. Gold sheets, approximately 0.15mm thick, are used by NASA as a radiation shield to deflect the burning heat of the sun. Without this coating, darker colored parts of the spacecraft would absorb significant amounts of heat and threaten missions and the people aboard them.

Gold is also used as a lubricant between mechanical parts. In the vacuum of space, organic lubricants would volatilize and break down due to the intense radiation. Gold has a very low shear strength so applying thin films between critical moving parts serves as an unexpected lubricant. The gold molecules slip past one another under the forces of friction to provide exceptional lubricant action.

Environmental Uses
Due to its unique chemical and metallurgical properties, gold has a vital role to play in future technologies including water purification, reducing pollution, energy consumption, and diesel emission control.

Water Purification
Chlorinated hydrocarbons are major pollutants of groundwater. Recent research at Rice University's Centre for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology revealed that bimetallic gold-palladium nanoparticles provide an active catalyst to break down trichlorethene (TCE), one of the most common and poisonous groundwater pollutants. TCE has been linked to liver damage, impaired pregnancy and cancer. This nanomaterial opens up tremendous opportunities in groundwater clean-up. In other work, researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology, have proven that gold nanoparticles, incorporated into a point-of-use water purification device, can be effective in the capture and removal of halocarbon-based pesticides from drinking water.

Mercury Control
The US is relying increasingly on the use of coal to produce electrical power and significant levels of mercury occur in the effluent from these power plants. Control of mercury, which has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease and autism, is expected to be achieved in the US by imposed limits on mercury emissions from coal-fired boilers in the utilities industry. One method to increase mercury removal is to introduce a catalyst to enhance the oxidation of mercury and gold catalysts are proving to be very promising. Full scale trials are currently underway.

Diesel Emission Control
The recent announcement by U.S. company Nanostellar that they have developed an automotive pollution control catalyst for diesel engines that contains gold, as well as the traditional platinum and palladium ingredients, is a major step-forward in cost effective emission control.

'Green' Chemistry
Green chemistry, also called sustainable chemistry, is a chemical philosophy encouraging the design of industrial chemicals and processes that reduce or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances. The use of gold as a catalyst has a major role to play in green chemistry.

Most industrial oxidation processes tend to use chlorine or organic peroxides.

Fuel Cells
Fuel cells using hydrogen fuel are a promising clean energy source for automobiles, homes, and mobile devices. At present, platinum is generally used as a catalyst in the fuel cell. However, platinum is an extremely expensive precious metal, therefore, an important R & D theme in the fuel cell industry is reduction of material cost by minimizing use of platinum. In 2008, leading Japanese manufacturer Hitachi Maxell announced development of a new catalyst based on gold-platinum nanoparticles - see http://www.maxell.co.jp/e/release/20080327.html for more information. This success represents a large step closer to the practical use of fuel cells for applications requiring large current, such as power sources for automobiles and homes.


In Modern Medicine
Gold is used in medicine to treat rheumatoid arthritis, liver, eye and ear diseases, as well as depression. It is used in a group of drugs used to slow down rheumatoid arthritis known as DMARDs. Also, in the last few decades the properties of gold compounds have been of interest as potential cancer treatments. Particles of a radioactive gold isotope are implanted in tissues to serve as a radiation source in the treatment of certain cancers.

Radioactive gold is also used in many surgical instruments, electronic equipment and life-support devices. Gold is nonreactive in the instruments and is highly reliable in the electronic equipment and life-support devices.

In Dentistry
Gold's malleability, resistance to corrosion and non allergenic properties make it perfect for dental use, although its softness means that it needs to be alloyed to reduce wearing. The most common companion metals are platinum, silver and copper.

Gold is known to have been used in dentistry as early as 700 B.C. Etruscan "dentists" used gold wire to fasten replacement teeth into the mouths of their patients. Gold was probably used to fill cavities in ancient times as well, however there is no documentation or archaeological evidence for this use of gold until a little over a thousand years ago.

Gold was much more generously used in dentistry up until the late 1970's. Its sharp price escalation motivated the search for and development of substitute materials. However, the amount of gold used in dentistry is starting to rise again stemming from the concerns that less inert metals might have an adverse effect on long-term health.
Very well said, thanks. Also there social reasons for large amounts of gold as in India. Gold in most cases is a byproduct when mining, like nickle, which is a metal only found in 3 places, you can't make stainless steel with out it.These endeavors employ a lot of people and require a lot of machinery, hopefully made in the US or Ca.
 
Old 10-22-2012, 01:45 PM
 
Location: Old Mother Idaho
29,198 posts, read 22,263,933 times
Reputation: 23827
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank DeForrest View Post
It cannot cannot be created out of thin air and manipulated by governments, therin lies the value.
The desire to own gold is as artificial as any other monetary exchange. While no metal, except for some of the rare radioactive metallic elements are created out of thin air, any metal is only worth what it is used for.

What is gold used for? Make a list of it's uses, then compare that list to tin, which is scarcer than gold.

If an economy fails, the price of gold goes with it. Gold in a failed economy is worth no more than a given number of failed dollars (or kroners, or rands, or pounds or francs). If it becomes the medium of exchange, then it is worth only what the exchange is worth. This is why, in 1850's Sacremento, and ounce of gold was worth 50 pounds of potatoes.

What counts when a currency fails is something else that is not created out of thin air. Dirt. He who owns arable dirt prospers. He who owns gold does not.
 
Old 10-22-2012, 02:01 PM
 
Location: it depends
6,369 posts, read 6,394,315 times
Reputation: 6388
Quote:
Originally Posted by darstar View Post
What I am saying is in the end commodities are King , paper promises will become less in demand The Relm of the day, world standard, falls back on gold once again. It is also true that in very black conditions , barter will take over, it is true you can't eat the stuff!
Commodities are king, huh? The average annual increase in the price of ag commodities can scarcely be measured over the past century, it is so small. Gold 1980 to today? Oil from 1974 to today? All pathetic.

Percentage ownership interests in going concerns show real returns over any long period you can measure--including the 200 year history of the London Stock Exchange. My stock certificates are printed on paper, but they give me percentage ownership of vast oil reserves, iron ore capacity, a huge and profitable network of rails, the factories and distribution and brands of the largest clothing manufacturer in the world, the stores and warehouses and technology of the biggest retailer in the world, etc., etc., etc.

If your gold ever hits $10,000 an ounce, what will a gallon of gasoline cost? And how high will Exxon's earnings and dividends be?

But keep promoting the sterile relic. You are persuading others to sell their percentage ownership interests in great companies to me, for a tiny fraction of their future value.
 
Old 10-22-2012, 03:45 PM
 
438 posts, read 1,529,140 times
Reputation: 324
Quote:
Originally Posted by banjomike View Post
The desire to own gold is as artificial as any other monetary exchange. While no metal, except for some of the rare radioactive metallic elements are created out of thin air, any metal is only worth what it is used for.


What is gold used for? Make a list of it's uses, then compare that list to tin, which is scarcer than gold.


If an economy fails, the price of gold goes with it. Gold in a failed economy is worth no more than a given number of failed dollars (or kroners, or rands, or pounds or francs). If it becomes the medium of exchange, then it is worth only what the exchange is worth. This is why, in 1850's Sacremento, and ounce of gold was worth 50 pounds of potatoes.

What counts when a currency fails is something else that is not created out of thin air. Dirt. He who owns arable dirt prospers. He who owns gold does not.
For at least 2500 years it's been used for money.

Just because tin is used more dosen't make it more valuble, it's used more becaues it's cheaper and that's because it's not more scarce than gold, see chart below

http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials...ras022801.html


Gold is also more malleable than tin and gold does not dislove in nitirc acid like tin does. More inteting facts about gold.

Interesting Facts about Gold
  • Gold is the most ductile of all metals, meaning it is the most suitable for drawing into wires. Amazingly, one ounce of gold can be drawn into a wire 1250 miles long (thickness 1 micron). This means that you could make a gold wire long enough to go around the earth with just 20 ounces of gold. Using metric units, one gram of gold could be drawn to a length of 66 km.
  • Gold is also the most malleable of all metals, meaning it can be beaten into thinner sheets than any other metal. Gold can be beaten without any special difficulty to a thickness of 0.1 micron. A stack of one thousand sheets of 0.1 micron gold leaf is the same thickness as a typical piece of printer paper.
  • Gold is one of the densest elements. A cube of gold with each side just 14.2 inches long would weigh a ton. (37.27 cm sides give a metric ton.) The six metals denser than gold are Os, Ir, Pt, Re, Np and Pu.
  • The concentration of gold below Earth’s crust is about 100 times higher than the concentration in it.
  • ‘The acid test’ has become part of everyday speech. It means a test whose result is absolutely certain. The first acid test was a drop of nitric acid on metal. Gold does not dissolve in nitric acid, so if a metal reacts with nitric acid, it is certainly not gold. The ‘acid test’ became popular in the 1849 Californian gold rush, when all sorts of shady characters tried their hand at selling fake gold.
  • The total mass of gold ever extracted from Earth is 170 000 metric tons (at the beginning of 2012). This amount of gold would fill three and a half Olympic swimming pools. About 2500 metric tons of gold is now mined every year. Two-thirds of all the gold ever taken from the earth has been taken since 1950. (12) (13)
  • Want to get rich quick? Nobel prize winning chemist Fritz Haber did, but not for personal gain; Haber tried to help the German economy by extracting gold from seawater, but could not do it profitably. As recently as the 1980s the oceans were thought to contain about 4 kg of gold for every cubic kilometer of water – that’s almost 1 kg or 2 lb of gold each for everyone on Earth today. Estimates of ocean gold keep falling, however, and it now seems likely that each cubic kilometer of ocean contains just 30 grams of gold (Nozaki, 1992). That’s 1 ounce of gold in every 264 billion gallons of water. If you could process seawater equal in volume to draining Lake Ontario, you would capture 48 kg of gold, worth less than $3 million at today’s gold price. You cannot put that amount of water – 1600 cubic kilometers – through any chemical extraction process for $3 million. But perhaps you have an idea?
  • In the world-changing Gold Foil Experiment, Ernest Rutherford and his coworkers Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden fired alpha particles at gold leaf. The experiment found that alpha particles were deflected as they passed through the gold more than they ought to have been if the gold atoms were made of smoothly spread matter. The gold leaf used in the experiment had been pressed to about 0.6 micrometers thick – that’s a thickness of about 2000 gold atoms. By 1911 Rutherford had concluded that atoms consist of a tiny, dense point of positive charge surrounded mostly by empty space in which negatively charged electrons are present.
  • In the fourth century BC the Greek mathematician and philosopher Plato wrote: “all the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue.”
Gold
 
Old 10-22-2012, 03:56 PM
 
467 posts, read 663,219 times
Reputation: 211
Bring back the gold standard.
 
Old 10-22-2012, 06:49 PM
 
Location: State of Superior
8,733 posts, read 15,906,609 times
Reputation: 2869
Quote:
Originally Posted by marcopolo View Post
Commodities are king, huh? The average annual increase in the price of ag commodities can scarcely be measured over the past century, it is so small. Gold 1980 to today? Oil from 1974 to today? All pathetic.

Percentage ownership interests in going concerns show real returns over any long period you can measure--including the 200 year history of the London Stock Exchange. My stock certificates are printed on paper, but they give me percentage ownership of vast oil reserves, iron ore capacity, a huge and profitable network of rails, the factories and distribution and brands of the largest clothing manufacturer in the world, the stores and warehouses and technology of the biggest retailer in the world, etc., etc., etc.

If your gold ever hits $10,000 an ounce, what will a gallon of gasoline cost? And how high will Exxon's earnings and dividends be?

But keep promoting the sterile relic. You are persuading others to sell their percentage ownership interests in great companies to me, for a tiny fraction of their future value.
You are quite wrong on gold, that's already been addressed .I did not tell anyone to sell anything. What I did say was buying gold, for me, was the only way I would have saved. I always been a buyer, that's MY problem and my safety net, small as it was, it helped.Just because I lost big in the markets does not mean everyone does.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Similar Threads

All times are GMT -6. The time now is 02:25 PM.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top