What Happens To All The Gold And Where Is It Going?

At least once a day, my husband feels the need to inform me of the price of gold. It's part of his daily witnessing and running commentary on how much this world is going to hell-in-a-hand basket, with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

The other day, he said to me:

"What becomes of all the gold . . . where is the gold?"

Well, as a woman who has been married to him over twenty years, I know that any question of this sort is not a question -- at least in terms of getting him wanting an answer from me -- it's all about listening to his own theories and agreeing with them.

I won't put all of you through the musings of an aging country boy addicted to watching television day and night, but I will say -- this was one of his better questions that deserves an answer.

There is no simple answer. Some of it wears aways, and so is lost, but most of the known gold remains in the world in some form or other. Long before what we call history began, gold was found in river sand.

Its presence was detected by the gleaming grains of metal, which were separated from the soil by successive washings.

Further search, sometimes led to the discovery of nuggets of gold of various sizes. Primitive man used the precious metal to deck his body with ornaments made of beads strung together. Not until a later stage of his development did he learn how to work it into artistic forms and cast it into molds.

Traces of gold decoration have been found even on flint knives of the Stone Age. At the time of the First Dynasty in Egypt, more than five thousand years before the Christian Era, gold jewelry of exquisite fineness and artistic design was produced.

Some of this remains to this day as a reminder that our boasted modern civilization, in some ways at least, has had much to learn from the long-buried past.

The total amount of gold produced in ancient times is unknown. That it was enormous may be judged by the estimates, frankly incredible though these are, of the money value of gold collected by David and his successor for the building of the Temple at Jerusalem.

These fabulous amounts are described as somewhere between $4,000,000,000 and $5,500,000,000. Though we can dismiss these figures, there is no doubt that gold was lavishly used. Solomon's yearly revenue in gold has been reckoned at more than $20,000,000.

Conquered nations were usually made to pay tribute in the form of gold, and enormous wealth passed from one owner to another. All the empires of the past amassed vast stocks of the precious metal by conquest.

Even after a conqueror had carried off as much as could be found, there usually remained in a vanquished country large amounts hoarded up or buried in the soil to evade detection.

Considerable amounts of gold found in a safe home in sacred temples until such time as a ruthless unbeliever robbed the shrine of its treasures. Solomon's Temple was stripped in this way by Nebuchadnezzar, King of the Babylonians.

One may assume that though the world's store of gold changes hands in the turn of Fortune's wheel, the actual amount in the world only very slowly increases.

The discovery of the Americas and of gold in the continents gave a great impetus to gold production.

The world's output from the end of the fifteenth century to the modern times has been valued at over $30,000,000,000.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, gold was found in large quantities in California and Australia.

Around about 1882 mining was begun in the Transvaal and the gold output from the Rand became the largest in the world. The value of the gold produced from those mints at one time around the 1950s was more than $8,000,000,000.

Some of the world's gold lies at the bottom of the sea, where the vessels carrying it sank in deep waters.

Wear and tear must account for some gold loss, especially in the case of coins.

The bulk of the gold produced is used in in jewelry and so is not really lost, just sort of recycled in weird way. Then, there is the uncoined gold, in bars in the treasuries of many nations and some individuals.

The search for gold has occupied men's thoughts and endeavors for almost countless centuries. Long before the bright yellow metal was coined and used as a basis of trade, it was sought for ornament.

Gold is the most glamorous color, perhaps because it suggests the gun. A true friend is said to be "pure gold," a generous person has a "heart of gold." A famous orator is "golden voiced." A time of great culture is a Golden Age.

Hidden aways in the earth are rich layers of gold. Bright pebbles or nuggets lie in river beds, waiting to be found.

However, Nature has moods of merriment. She has stored away sometimes near gold veins, or sometimes mixed with bits of the precious metal, a beautiful yellow mineral with high luster, looking so much like gold that when men first come upon it they are likely to be deceived. So often has this happened that the mineral -- iron pyrites -- is nicknamed "fool's gold."

Iron pyrites has, however, a value of its own. It is a combination of iron and sulfur and often contains traces of copper, cobalt, nickel, gold and other elements, all of which can be extracted from the ore. The sulfur is obtained for manufacturing sulfuric acid, useful in the preparation of fertilizers.

Pure gold is known, in the jewelry trade as 24-carat gold. This is too soft a metal for ordinary wear and tear, so a harder metal, generally copper, is alloyed with gold.

If the alloy has eighteen parts of gold and six parts of another metal, we call it 18-carat gold. If it has fourteen parts of gold and ten of another metal, we call it 14-carat gold, and so on.

Goldbeater's skin is something that is part of everyday conversation. Goldbeater's skin is made form the peritoneum of an ox, a membrane that protects the internals organs and acts as a wall to the abdomen.

The chief use, the use that gave goldbeater's skin its name -- is in connection with the making of gold leaf.

The gold leaf used for gilding is real gold, or sometimes an alloy of gold and another metal, which has been treated to annealing and hammering processes until it is about only 1/290,000 of an inch thick.

Aver several preliminary processes, small, thin squares of gold are placed in a pile and between special paper and are hammered. It is then cut into smaller pieces, piled between sheets of goldbeater's skin and is again hammered. The hammering becomes lighter as the leaf becomes thinner, until the desired degree of thinness is reached.

Goldbeating is one of the oldest of the arts, and is thought to have originated among the Eastern nations. Homer wrote about it in his great poems. Examples of gilding have been found on mummy cases taken from the tombs of the ancient Egyptian kings. The gold leaf of the ancients was about three times as thick as the gold leaf of today.

Gold alloyed with silver has a silvery color and luster. If there is more than half gold in the alloy it may be used by jewelers as white gold.

Watches, bracelets, necklaces and settings for jewels are a few of the ways in which white gold appears.

Gold alloyed with copper is sometimes called yellow gold, sometimes it is red or "rose" gold.

When a layer of gold is deposited over another substance, usually over another metal, we say the object is gold-plated. The plating may be very thin or rather heavy.

When an extra heavy layer of gold is plated over another metal, we say the object is gold-filled. More gold is used.