Buying Gold Bullion
Gold has been widely used throughout the world as a vehicle for monetary exchange, either by issuance and recognition of gold coins or other bare metal quantities, or through gold-convertible paper instruments by establishing gold standards in which the total value of issued money is represented in a store of gold reserves.
However unlike most other commodities, saving and disposal plays a larger role in affecting its price than its consumption. However, production has not grown in relation to the world’s economies. Most of the gold ever mined still exists in accessible form, such as bullion and mass-produced jewelry, with little value over its fine weight — and is thus potentially able to come back onto the gold market for the right price.
Today, like most commodities, the price of Gold in 2012 will be driven by supply and demand as well as speculation. Modern mining processes involve prospecting for ore bodies, analysis of the profit potential of a proposed mine, extraction of the desired materials and finally reclamation of the land to prepare it for other uses once the mine is closed.
Switzerland was the last country to tie its currency to gold; it backed 40% of its value until the Swiss joined the International Monetary Fund in 1999.
Pure gold is too soft for day-to-day monetary use and is typically hardened by alloying with copper, silver or other base metals. The gold content of alloys is measured in carats (k). Pure gold is designated as 24k. English gold coins intended for circulation from 1526 into the 1930s were typically a standard 22k alloy called crown gold, for hardness (American gold coins for circulation after 1837 contained the slightly lower amount of 0.900 fine gold, or 21.6 kt).
Gold versus stock
In the last century, major economic crises (such as the Great Depression, World War II, the first and second oil crisis) lowered the Dow/gold ratio, an indicator of how bad a recession is and whether the outlook is deteriorating or improving, to a value well below 4. The ratio fell on February 18, 2009 to below 8.During these difficult times, many investors tried to preserve their assets by investing in precious metals, most notably gold and silver.
The performance of gold bullion is often compared to stocks due to their fundamental differences. Gold is regarded by some as a store of value (without growth) whereas stocks are regarded as a return on value (i.e., growth from anticipated real price increase plus dividends). Stocks and bonds perform best in a stable political climate with strong property rights and little turmoil. The attached graph shows the value of Dow Jones Industrial Average divided by the price of an ounce of gold. Since 1800, stocks have consistently gained value in comparison to gold in part because of the stability of the American political system.This appreciation has been cyclical with long periods of stock outperformance followed by long periods of gold outperformance. The Dow Industrials bottomed out a ratio of 1:1 with gold during 1980 (the end of the 1970s bear market) and proceeded to post gains throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The gold price peak of 1980 also coincided with the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan and the threat of the global expansion of communism. The ratio peaked on January 14, 2000 a value of 41.3 and has fallen sharply since.
Gold coins and gold bars in the market..
Surface mining is done by removing (stripping) surface vegetation, dirt, and if necessary, layers of bedrock in order to reach buried ore deposits of gold in 2012
. Techniques of surface mining include; Open-pit mining which consists of recovery of materials from an open pit in the ground, quarrying or gathering building materials from an open pit mine, strip mining which consists of stripping surface layers off to reveal ore/seams underneath, and mountaintop removal, commonly associated with coal mining, which involves taking the top of a mountain off to reach ore deposits at depth. Most (but not all) placer deposits, because of their shallowly buried nature, are mined by surface methods. Landfill mining, finally, involves sites where landfills are excavated and processed.
Sub-surface mining consists of digging tunnels or shafts into the earth to reach buried ore deposits. Ore, for processing, and waste rock, for disposal, are brought to the surface through the tunnels and shafts. Sub-surface mining can be classified by the type of access shafts used, the extraction method or the technique used to reach the mineral deposit. Drift mining utilizes horizontal access tunnels, slope mining uses diagonally sloping access shafts and shaft mining consists of vertical access shafts. Mining in hard and soft rock formations require different techniques.
Other methods include shrinkage stope mining which is mining upward creating a sloping underground room, long wall mining which is grinding a long ore surface underground and room and pillar which is removing ore from rooms while leaving pillars in place to support the roof of the room. Room and pillar mining often leads to retreat mining which is removing the pillars which support rooms, allowing the room to cave in, loosening more ore.
The extraction of metals has been closely linked to economic growth. During the 20th century, the variety of metals uses in society grew rapidly. Today, the development of major nations, such as China and India, and advances in technologies, are fuelling ever more demand. Both gold coins and gold bars are widely traded in liquid markets, and therefore still serve as a private store of wealth.
Dirty snowballs on the sky
Comet and earthquake are nuclei are known to range from about 100 meters to more than 40 kilometres across. They are composed of rock, dust, water ice, and frozen gases such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane and ammonia. Because of their low mass, comet nuclei do not become spherical under their own gravity, and thus have irregular shapes. Officially, according to NASA guidelines, a comet has to be at least 85% ice in order to be considered an actual comet.
Both the coma and tail are illuminated by the Sun and may become visible from Earth when a comet passes through the inner solar system, the dust reflecting sunlight directly and the gases glowing from ionisation. Most comets are too faint to be visible without the aid of a telescope, but a few each decade become bright enough to be visible to the naked eye.
As a result of outgassing, comets leave a trail of solid debris. If the comet’s path crosses Earth’s path, then at that point there are likely to be meteor showers as Earth passes through the trail of debris. The Perseid meteor shower occurs every year between August 9 and August 13, when Earth passes through the orbit of Comet Swift-Tuttle. Halley’s comet is the source of the Orionid shower in October.
Most comets have elongated elliptical orbits that take them close to the Sun for a part of their orbit, and then out into the further reaches of the Solar System for the remainder. Comets are often classified according to the length of their orbital periods: the longer the period the more elongated the ellipse. Comets have a wide range of orbital periods, ranging from a few years to hundreds of thousands of years.
Short-period comets are generally defined as having orbital periods of less than 200 years. They usually orbit more-or-less in the ecliptic plane in the same direction as the planets. Their orbits typically take them out to the region of the outer planets (Jupiter and beyond) at aphelion; for example, the aphelion of Halley’s Comet is a little beyond the orbit of Neptune. At the shorter extreme, Encke’s Comet has an orbit which never puts it farther away from the Sun than Jupiter. Short-period comets are further divided into the Jupiter family (periods less than 20 years) and Halley family (periods between 20 and 200 years). Short-period comets originate in the Kuiper belt, or its associated scattered disc, which lie beyond the orbit of Neptune.
Some comets meet a more spectacular end—either falling into the Sun, or smashing into a planet or other body. Collisions between comets and planets or moons were common in the early Solar System: some of the many craters on the Earth’s Moon, for example, may have been caused by comets. A recent collision of a comet with a planet occurred in July 1994 when Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 broke up into pieces and collided with Jupiter.
Many comets and asteroids collided into Earth in its early stages. Many scientists believe that comets bombarding the young Earth (about 4 billion years ago) brought the vast quantities of water that now fill the Earth’s oceans, or at least a significant portion of it. Other researchers have cast doubt on this theory. The detection of organic molecules in comets has led some to speculate that comets or meteorites may have brought the precursors of life—or even life itself—to Earth. There are still many near-Earth comets, although a collision with an asteroid is more likely than with a comet.
It is suspected that comet impacts have, over long timescales, also delivered significant quantities of water to the Earth’s Moon, some of which may have survived as lunar ice.
Forthcoming space missions will add greater detail to our understanding of what comets are made of. The European Rosetta probe is presently en route to Comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko; in 2014 it will go into orbit around the comet and place a small lander on its surface.
Of the thousands of known comets, some are very unusual. Encke’s Comet orbits from outside the main asteroid belt to just inside the orbit of the planet Mercury while the Comet 29P/Schwassmann–Wachmann currently travels in a nearly circular orbit entirely between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn. 2060 Chiron, whose unstable orbit is between Saturn and Uranus, was originally classified as an asteroid until a faint coma was noticed. Similarly, Comet Shoemaker–Levy 2 was originally designated asteroid 1990 UL3. Roughly six percent of the near-earth asteroids are thought to be extinct nuclei of comets which no longer experience outgassing.
A new comet may be discovered photographically using a wide-field telescope or visually with binoculars. Comet C/2010 X1 (Elenin) is a long-period comet discovered by amateur Russian astronomer Leonid Elenin on December 10, 2010, remotely, using the International Scientific Optical Network’s robotic observatory near Mayhill, New Mexico, U.S.A. At the time of discovery Elenin had an apparent magnitude of 19.5, making it about 150,000 times fainter than the naked eye magnitude of 6.5. The discoverer, Leonid Elenin, estimates that the comet nucleus is 3–4 km in diameter.
However, even without access to optical equipment, it is still possible for the amateur astronomer to discover a Sun-grazing comet online by downloading images accumulated by some satellite observatories such as SOHO. SOHO’s 2000th comet was discovered by Polish amateur astronomer Michal Kusiak on 26 December 2010, and the numbers are expected to continue rising steadily for the foreseeable future.
Description of Comets
A comet is an icy, small Solar System body which, when close enough to the Sun, displays a visible coma (a thin, fuzzy, temporary atmosphere as present in Comet Elenin ) and sometimes also a tail. Comet nuclei range from a few hundred meters to tens of kilometers across and are composed of loose collections of ice, dust, and small rocky particles. These phenomena are both due to the effects of solar radiation and the solar wind upon the nucleus of the comet. Comets are distinguished from asteroids by the presence of a coma or a tail. Asteroids are thought to have a different origin from comets, having formed inside the orbit of Jupiter rather than in the outer Solar System.
Comet nuclei are known to range from about 100 meters to more than 40 kilometres across. Officially, according to NASA guidelines, a comet has to be at least 85% ice in order to be considered an actual comet. As a result of outgassing, comets leave a trail of solid debris. If the comet’s path crosses Earth’s path, then at that point there are likely to be meteor showers as Earth passes through the trail of debris. Most comets have elongated elliptical orbits that take them close to the Sun for a part of their orbit, and then out into the further reaches of the Solar System for the remainder.
It is suspected that comet impacts have, over long timescales, also delivered significant quantities of water to the Earth’s Moon, some of which may have survived as lunar ice.There are still many near-Earth comets, although a collision with an asteroid is more likely than with a comet. It is suspected that comet impacts have, over long timescales, also delivered significant quantities of water to the Earth’s Moon, some of which may have survived as lunar ice.
Decision to Mine Gold
The mining company makes the decision to develop the mine or to walk away from the project. This includes mine planning to evaluate the economically recoverable portion of the deposit, the metallurgy and ore recoverability, marketability and payability of the ore concentrates, engineering concerns, milling and infrastructure costs, finance and equity requirements and an analysis of the proposed mine from the initial excavation all the way through to reclamation. The proportion of a deposit that is economically recoverable is dependent on the enrichment factor of the ore in the area.
Once the analysis determines a given ore body is worth recovering, development begins to create access to the ore body. The mine buildings and processing plants are built and any necessary equipment is obtained. The operation of the mine to recover the ore begins and continues as long as the company operating the mine finds it economical to do so.
Mining techniques can be divided into two common excavation types: surface mining and sub-surface (underground) mining. Surface mining is much more common, and produces, for example, 85% of minerals (excluding petroleum and natural gas) in the United States, including 98% of metallic ores. Targets are divided into two general categories of materials: placer deposits, consisting of valuable minerals contained within river gravels, beach sands, and other unconsolidated materials; and lode deposits, where valuable minerals are found in veins, in layers, or in mineral grains generally distributed throughout a mass of actual rock.
The extraction of metals has been closely linked to economic growth. During the 20th century, the variety of metals uses in society grew rapidly. The price of Gold in 2012 will be driven by supply and demand as well as speculation.