I am probably like everyone else when it comes to gold, I have some jewelry that is gold and few other pieces. Now you can listen to radio and TV and hear about the advantage to buy gold as an investment or what they call insurance against inflation. Gold have been around since the beginning of human civilation. This means gold has been a form of trade for over several thousand years around the world. It would be cool to own some gold. Maybe create a stash of some gold bars. A friend of mine has been into buying gold bars and then when he needed money he would then cash them out. Sometimes if he could hold onto them long enough he could make a good little profit, some of the times but not every time. The current price of gold is over thirteen hundred dollars per house. That is a huge amount of money for an once of metal. The above video is about the South African krugerrand.  The Krugerrand have no value and are made for being traded in other countries. Watch the video above on the Krugerrand of South Africa. I need some of these.  One coin that I have heard but never owned one, is the Swiss franc, these coins has been around over 500 years all made from gold.

The American eagle coin is a base unit of money denomination issued only for gold coins manufactured at the United States Mint. The gold coin eagle were stopped minted in 1933. The American eagle was the largest of the four main decimal base units of denomination used for circulating coinage in the United States. In 1933 gold was withdrawn from circulation. A dark day for us collectors. The four main base-units of denomination of coinage used in the US were the cent, the dime, the dollar, and the eagle. This seemed a lot like metric where a dime is 10 worth cents, a dollar is worth 10 dimes, and an eagle is worth 10 dollars.

Some of the things I thought was cool about the eagle was denomination served as the basis of the gold quarter-eagle, the gold half-eagle, the eagle, and the double-eagle gold coins. If you can find one, the eagle is still legal tender for all your debts public and private at their face values. These face values of eagles do not reflect their intrinsic value which is much greater and is mainly dictated by their troy weight and the current precious metal price.

It would be hard paying my bills with gold coins.

With the exceptions of the gold dollar coin, the gold three-dollar coin, the three-cent nickel, and the five-cent nickel, the unit of denomination of coinage prior to 1933 was conceptually linked to the precious or semi-precious metal that comprised a majority of the alloy used in that coin. In this regard the United States followed long-standing European practice of different base-unit denominations for different precious and semi-precious metals. In the United States, the cent was the base-unit of denomination in copper. The dime and dollar were the base-units of denomination in silver. The eagle was the base-unit of denomination in gold. A $10 eagle in 1800 would have the equivalent purchasing power of $127.76 today.

476 A.D.
The Goths depose Emperor Romulas Augustus, marking the fall of the Roman Empire.

600 A.D. – 699 A.D.
The Byzantine Empire resumes gold mining in central Europe and France, an area untouched since the fall of the Roman Empire.

742 A.D. – 814 A.D.
Charlemagne overruns the Avars and plunders their vast quantities of gold, making it possible for him to take control over much of western Europe.

1066 A.D.
With the Norman conquest, a metallic currency standard is finally re-established in Great Britain with the introduction of a system of pounds, shillings, and pence. The pound is literally a pound of sterling silver.

1250 A.D. – 1299 A.D.
Marco Polo writes of his travels to the Far East, where the “gold wealth was almost unlimited.”

1284 A.D.
Venice introduces the gold Ducat, which soon becomes the most popular coin in the world and remains so for more than five centuries.

1284 A.D.
Great Britain issues its first major gold coin, the Florin. This is followed shortly by the Noble, and later by the Angel, Crown, and Guinea.

1377 A.D.
Great Britain shifts to a monetary system based on gold and silver.

1511 A.D.
King Ferdinand of Spain says to explorers, “Get gold, humanely if you can, but all hazards, get gold,” launching massive expeditions to the newly discovered lands of the Western Hemisphere.

3000 B.C.
The Sumer civilization of southern Iraq uses gold to create a wide range of jewelry, using a series of sophisticated and varied styles still worn today.

2500 B.C.
Gold jewelry is buried in the Tomb of Djer, king of the First Egyptian Dynasty, Egypt.

1500 B.C.
The gold-bearing regions of Nubia make Egypt a very wealthy nation, as gold becomes the recognized standard medium of exchange for all trade. The Shekel is a coin that originally weighed approx. 11.3 grams of gold. It becomes a standard unit of measure in the Middle East. It contained a naturally occurring alloy called electrum that was approximately two-thirds gold and one-third silver.

1350 B.C.
Babylonians begin to use fire assay to test the purity of gold.

1200 B.C.
Egyptians master the art of beating gold into leaf to extend its use, as well as alloying it with other metals for hardness and color variations. They also start casting gold using the lost-wax technique that today is still at the heart of jewelry making. Unshorn sheepskin is used to recover gold dust from river sands on the eastern shores of the Black Sea. After slucing the sands through the sheepskins, they are dried and shaken out to dislodge the gold particles. The practice is most likely the inspiration for the “Golden Fleece”.

1091 B.C.
Little squares of gold are legalized in China as a form of money.

560 B.C.
The first coins made purely from gold are minted in Lydia, a kingdom of Asia Minor.

344 B.C.
Alexander the Great crosses the Hellespont with 40,000 men, beginning one of the most extraordinary campaigns in military history and seizing vast quantities of gold from the Persian Empire.

300 B.C.
Greeks and Jews of ancient Alexandria begin to practice alchemy, the quest of turning base metals into gold. The search reaches its pinnacle from the late Dark Ages through the Renaissance.

218 B.C. – 202 B.C.
During the second Punic War with Carthage, the Romans gain access to the gold mining region of Spain and recover gold through stream gravels and hard rock mining.

58 B.C.
After a victorious campaign in Gaul, Julius Caesar brings back enough gold to give 200 coins to each of his soldiers and repay all of Rome’s debts.

50 B.C.
Romans begin issuing a gold coin called the Aureus.

GoldPricesGuide

Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au in Latin it is aurum. The atomic number of gold is 79. Gold has been ighly sought-after precious metal dawn of time. Gold can be found as nuggets, streams have been a popular place to mine gold. Gold can also be found grains in rocks, in veins and in alluvial deposits. Gold is very heavy, it is dense, shiny, solf and easy to work with because of it is very malleable.

Gold Prices Guide