“We have gold because we can’t trust governments,” President Herbert Hoover was said to have quipped President Franklin D. Roosevelt during discussions of the Emergency Banking Act in 1933. While that is one of the reasons why people invest in gold, the idea is that if the government failed, the money would be worth nothing ; Not all bullion investors buy out of fear or preparation. The fact is that gold is a proven, stable and good investment. It has been shown to hold its value, work as a great hedge against inflation , and is a strong alternative to weakening currencies .
Gold has been a desirable precious metal for centuries, first used for trade in the markets of Lydia in Ancient Greece (home of the mythical King Midas, who turned everything he touched into gold) and was still in play as a currency active in the USA. until the Emergency Banking Act forced Americans to convert their gold into US dollars in 1933. Although it is simply a basic chemical element found in the deposits of certain rock foundations, gold has seduced, mystified and mesmerized Americans. humanity for centuries, and it still has immense value today.
Like all precious things, gold is valuable because it is scarce . The United States Geological Survey estimates that there are about 33,000 tons left in the world to be extracted. But there’s more than that. Gold is valuable for its physical properties: it is a malleable, soft, dense and durable metal that happens to be attractive and beautiful enough to have attracted mankind for thousands of years. Stability, scarcity, and physical attributes make gold a smart investment, whether in the form of Gold rate in Dubai, coins, or jewelry.
What are bullions?
Bullion: Bulk gold or silver that is refined to 99.9 percent purity, melted down, and molded into bars, ingots, or coins. The word ingots comes from the French word “broth”, which means to boil.
Brief history of gold bullion
When used as money, gold was part of a system known as the gold standard , in which the value of money was defined in terms of gold. Modern societies now use fiat money or currency established by government regulation. In the latter system, the value of money is determined by supply and demand rather than by a physical commodity like gold. When currency was backed by gold, there had to be real gold to back it.
Gold bullion predates the modern economy. There were early forms of gold bullion as far back as just before the rise of Ancient Rome, and we know that the Romans used gold bullion as currency in Mesopotamia as early as the 7th millennium BC Although historians have documented the fact that the Gold bullion was used as currency long before the establishment of modern banks, it wasn’t until the 1700’s that the precious metal really took off as a formal and regulated system.
The Bank of England first created the gold reserves (it still serves as the world’s second-largest custodian of gold ). At the same time, the English colonies in the US used colonial gold until the country’s independence , when it began producing its own coins under the Coinage Act of 1792. Gold coins remained in circulation until the president Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102 prohibiting gold ownership.
Today, no American currency is made of gold or silver, but of much more abundant and less valuable metals, including copper, zinc, and nickel. Although our money is no longer backed by gold, it is still a powerful financial tool, with mints producing gold bars and coins as a stable alternative to the ever-fluctuating US dollar.
How ingots are made
The most traditional way to invest in gold is through gold bullion, which is essentially pure gold that has been refined, melted down, and formed into bars. Gold is inherently soft, malleable and can be handled regularly without breaking or being damaged, so it can withstand the heat, chemicals and pressure required in the bullion manufacturing process. Bullion manufacturing requires complex mining, mining, refining, pouring, pressing, and minting, all to end up with a high-value end result: a bar or ingot of (mostly) pure gold. Here’s a quick snapshot of the process.
