I got into an argument with an investor friend of mine the other day over buying gold why gold as an investment. He couldn’t see the value in it, and I was quite surprised at his attitude.
“What can you do with it?” he asked. “You can’t take it down to McDonald’s, for example, and shave off a few pieces and buy a hamburger. You can’t trade with it. You can’t do ANYTHING with it.”
His contention was that it really had no value…at least I THINK that was his argument.
Quite frankly, I’ve never heard anybody take this kind of stance before. Gold coins has been the basis of all trade, in all civilizations, since the dawn of time. The luster of gold, its seemingly indestructible and unchangeable nature, has grabbed the heart of Man and evoked deep feelings throughout history.
The dollar was backed in gold up until 1933 when Franklin Delano Roosevelt took America off the Gold Standard and set the stage for inflation. When the dollar was tied into a given quantity of gold, its value was pretty much “set in stone”, so to speak, but once a dollar bill could no longer be pegged to gold its value could change…
So, why own gold value of gold? I mean not as a contract, a futures commodity–but the metal itself?
Of all the Transition Metals, gold is certainly the most greatly desired. Since the beginning of recorded history, gold has been in use in many different works of art, coinage, and, of course, jewelry. Occurring as grains in rocks and in alluvial deposits, gold is shiny, soft, and dense. It is known to be a ductile and malleable as the pure metal. Probably its lustrous deep yellow color, more than anything else, has captured the heart and imagination…sometimes to the destruction of many.
Of all its physical properties, its density (19.30 g.cm-3), Melting Point: 1064.18°C, 1947.52°F, 1337.33°K, Boiling Point: 2856°C, 5173°F, 3129°K., as well as its lack of chemical reactivity (it does not tarnish or oxidize), lend it the kind of stability and aura of permanence that has built civilizations. Gold is chemically unaffected by air or moisture.
The term “gold” was derived from “geolu”, an Old English Anglo-Saxon word which means “yellow”. Its symbol “Au”, on the other hand, originated from “aurum”, the Latin word for “gold”. Gold may have been “discovered” in the year 1848 in California, but History tells us that this precious metal had already been used extensively by the ancient Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Chinese, and South Americans for millenia.
Throughout history, gold has served as a measure of value and a symbol of wealth. It is one of the coinage metals (along with silver and copper). It is used, customarily and legally, as a means of payment or a medium of exchange that crosses the boundaries of all nations (and times, for that matter). Gram and troy weight are the units of measurement used for gold. To indicate the amount of gold present in, say, a piece of jewelry, the term “carat” is used. A necklace, for instance, that is 24 carats means that it is made of pure gold.
While the price of gold is determined through trading in the derivatives and gold markets, its daily benchmark price is provided in a procedure called the London Gold Fix in which its price is determined each business day on the London market. The fixing is done twice – once in the morning and another in the afternoon. The latter actually was introduced about 49 years after the procedure itself came into being, as a means of providing a price when US markets are open. This gold-price fixing procedure is done by the five members of the London Gold Market Fixing Ltd., namely The Bank of Nova Scotia, Barclays Capital, Deutsche Bank AG London, HSBC, and Societe Generale Corporate & Investment Banking.
Ok, there you have it. But the question remains: Why own gold — the metal itself, I mean? Well, here’s the argument I used with my friend:
Let’s say you are a Southern plantation owner in the pre-Civil War South. You own an enormous mansion, vast land holdings, livestock, cotton fields, and, of course slaves. But, let’s say you also own a bag of gold coins, which you buried in a secret hideaway, say near an unusual looking rock beside a river that flows through your property. Then the Civil War destroys everything. Your Confederate money is no good, your mansion is destroyed, carpetbaggers have taken the rest. What do you have left?
Answer: that bag of gold which…
Which you dig up and trade for Union dollars and go “back into business” again.
That’s the value of gold. Every economy, every nation throughout history has recognized its value. Currencies become worthless. Governments fall, and are replaced. But all recognize the value of gold. Gold is what you want to own in times of instability.
“Well,” my buddy said when he saw the logic of that argument, “the problem with people who buy and bury gold is that other people follow them, kill them and steal it.” He said this with a humorous glint in his eye, not wishing to lose the argument. But he did have a point.
Such is our fascination with gold, that draws out the worst…and best, from the heart of Man.





