Gold was first discovered as shining, yellow nuggets. "Gold is where you find it," so the saying goes, and gold was first discovered in its natural state, in streams all over the world.
Gold became a part of every human culture. Its brilliance, natural beauty, and luster, and its great malleability and resistance to tarnish made it enjoyable to work and play with.
Gold was the first metal widely known to our species. Gold has always been powerful stuff.
Gold, beauty, and power have always gone together. Gold in ancient times was made into shrines and idols ("the Golden Calf"), plates, cups, vases and vessels of all kinds, and of course, jewelry for personal adornment.
Gold has always had value to humans, even before it was money. Prospecting for gold was a worldwide effort going back thousands of years, even before the first money in the form of gold coins appeared about 700 B.C.
Fixing Price for Gold
- The first Gold Fixing took place On the 12th September 1919 at 11.00am.
The original five founding members were: N M Rothschild & Sons; Mocatta & Goldsmid; Samuel Montagu & Co.; Pixley & Abell; and Sharps & Wilkins.
For over 80 years we have been fixing the price of gold providing market users with the opportunity to buy and sell gold at a single quoted price. It also provides a published benchmark price that is widely used as a pricing medium by producers, consumers, investors and central banks.
The fix is carried out twice a day by the 5 members via a dedicated conference call facility.
At the start of each fixing, the Chairman announces an opening price to the other 4 members who relay this price to their customers, and based on orders received from them, instruct their representatives to declare themselves as buyers or sellers at that price. Provided there are both buyers and sellers at that price, members are then asked to state the number of bars they wish to trade.
The Chairman then announces that the price is fixed. It should be noted that the Fix is said to balance if the buy amount and the sell amount are within 50 bars of each other. The Fixing will last as long as it is necessary to establish a price that satisfies both buyers and sellers.
To ensure that the price is not fixed before the member has had an opportunity to communicate any changes each member has a verbal flag. As long as any flag is raised, the Chairman may not declare the price fixed.
The difference between the different types of gold is in the purity of the gold.
The karat weight of gold is measured by a gold’s purity.
With 24 karat gold being pure gold.
22 karat gold would have a purity of 22/24 or 91.7 percent.
18 karat gold would have a purity of 18/24 or 75 percent.
14 karat gold would have a purity of 14/24 or 50 percent.
10 karat gold would have a purity of 10/24 or 41.6 percent.
As the purity of gold decreases, the alloy in the jewelry increases.
Copper and silver are the most common alloys used when making gold jewelry and white gold is usually made with a nickel alloy.
The higher karat weight a gold piece of jewelry has, the more valuable that piece of jewelry will be.
Gold Measuring
Gold measuring is usually done from 2 points of view:
Purity and
Weight
Purity
The purity of gold articles may be described in three ways:
Karat=> meaning parts of gold per 24.
Percent=> meaning parts of gold per 100 .
Fineness=> meaning parts of gold per 1,000 (European System).
Weight
The most widely known and used measure unit for gold is the troy ounce.
A troy ounce (480 grains) is 31.1034768 grams.
There are many other types of weight systems:
Grams and kilograms (metric system) , tolas , teals and baht.
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