For me, there is no thrill quite like that of seeing that beautiful gleam of yellow in the last bit of dirt in my scoop. Especially after hunting for hours, if not days, and hitting signal after signal and digging piece of trash after piece of trash. At that moment, all the tiredness, heat and thirst fade away and I kneel there with a happy grin on my face as I contemplate that rare and beautiful object.
Gold has been a desirable substance for mankind since the dawn of history. It is one of the 92 naturally occurring elements on or below the earth's surface. It is number 79 on the Periodic Table of Elements with an atomic number of 196.967 and a specific gravity of 19.3 which means it is over 19 times heavier than an equal volume of water. The standard of comparison is a volume of 1 cubic centimeter of water weighing in at 1 gram. Only five other metals on the table are heavier than gold. With a melting point of 1063 degrees Celsius and its resistance to chemical action, it is virtually indestructible. Gold is the most malleable of all the metals. It can be beaten into leaves as thin as 0.00001 mm thick and is used as a coating on the windows of high-rise buildings and the face shields of astronauts to block out infra-red and ultra-violet radiation while allowing light to come through. A single ounce can be stretched into a thread 35 miles long. On the Mhos hardness scale of 1 to 10, with talc at 1 and diamond at 10, gold comes in at 2.3 which made it extremely easy for early man to work it using the most primitive of tools. Beautiful gold ornaments have been found in Egypt dating from 5,000 b.c. giving us some idea of how far back our love affair with this rare element goes.
Buying and selling gold is done on the basis of weight. Of the three systems of weight commonly in use today, Avoirdupois, Apothecary and Troy, the traditional unit of measurement on the majority of gold markets is the Troy ounce. The basic unit of all three systems is the grain which is equal to 0.0648 of a gram.
A Troy ounce is equal to 480 grains while an Avoirdupois ounce, which we use in our everyday ounces and pounds, is equal to 437.5 grains. After the grain comes the gram, equal to 15 grains, and then the pennyweight equal to 24 grains. There are 20 pennyweight or 31.1035 grams to an ounce of gold. And, finally, there are only 12 Troy ounces to a Troy pound versus the 16 ounces in the Avoirdupois system.
By far, South Africa has been the largest producer of gold in the last hundred years or so. The latest figures I have are from 1979 so a lot may have changed since then but at that time South Africa produced just over 700 metric tons followed by Russia at 300 metric tons with the U.S.A. coming in fourth at close to 30 metric tons. That's one years production not total all time production! It is estimated that, with the exception of Russia, production in the major gold producing nations is at its peak and can now only hold its own or slowly decline. Russia has vast gold reserves but they are underdeveloped as yet and the Russian government keeps a closed mouth on its gold activities. Again using my somewhat outdated figures, the pattern of world gold consumption, by industry, went something like this: Jewllery,737 tons; Electronics, 94 tons; Dentistry, 87 tons; Coinage, 290 tons and other decorative uses, 74 tons. All these figures are for one year. In that one year, consumption outstripped production by several hundred tons and the difference had to be made up by so-called secondary sources, namely gold placed into the marketplace by private individuals and institutions
That's about the time, if you recall, that gold prices were climbing to an all time high of over $800 dollars per ounce. Since then, the price per ounce has fallen to its present value of just under $300 per ounce. Factors have been placed in motion recently to, perhaps, cause the price to begin an upward climb in the near future. We can only hope.
Gold occurs in and on the earth in primary and secondary deposits. Primary deposits consist of molten quartz which was forced up into fissures in the earth's crust far back in geologic time. The liquefied quartz usually had other impurities within it, some of which was molten gold, and when the quartz then cooled it formed veins or "lodes". Secondary deposits consist of veins on the surface slowly eroding over eons of time due to weather and other factors and in the process, releasing any free gold which may have been in the vein. This weathered out gold was then concentrated by wind, rain, gravity, etc. into deposits which we call "placers". Most of the gold strikes of the past one hundred and fifty years have been of placer deposits in California in 1849, the Klondike in Canada in 1898 and the gold boom in Australia which coincided with the California '49er gold rush. The California and Yukon miners got most of their gold from the streams and rivers of the Sierra Nevada's in California and the mountains of Canada. Today, the intelligent prospector, while checking the stream and river beds, will also roam the sides and tops of the hills and mountains for the gold which never made it to the bottom of the watercourses. There is still plenty of it out there so go on and get your share. Keep on walking and swinging. RD