Hidden value of Gold

[MaDuce]

There's no question that gold is a good looking metal. Who DOESN'T like a gold colored watch or gold plated cookware. But why pay so much money for good looks that can be replicated for a fraction of the price out of brass?

The answer you can expect most people to give is because of the rarity and it's effect on one's ego, and these are unquestionably historical causes for it's value and demand, but perhaps there's another reason why the ancient world has been so crazy about gold?

To understand what people have seen in gold, we must first understand who was most crazy about it.

Today, when we think of Gold and historic love for it, we usually associate it with royalty, pirates, bandits and fortune hunters. But there was actually another class of people out there who was even more crazy about it - the medieval alchemists.

So, why would an alchemist be so crazy about Gold. Oh, that's right, they wanted to figure out how to make the stuff. After all, can you imagine how rich you'd get if you figured out ho to make Gold back then? Actually, it's not hard to imagine at all. Contrary to how things initially sound, medieval alchemists probably had more to loose in figuring out how to make Gold then they had to gain. Gold's high price tag, just like today, was based on supply and demand. There was allot of demand but short supply. If you were to figure out how to mass produce the stuff, the value of Gold would be vastly depleted, which means that people who's wealth was based in their gold reserves would suddenly go from rich to poor.

So figuring out how to duplicate Gold was more likely to earn you a visit from an assassin then a wealthy benefactor.

So, why on earth would anyone waste so much time and resources trying to accomplish such a thing, let alone a massive undertaking that spanned multiple continents?

To understand this, we must look at the other factor that gives gold it's value - demand. We associate gold silverware and gold cups with kings and wealth, and there was undoubtedly an element of pride associated with drinking out of a gold cup rather then a wood one, but this is actually just a bonus.

In the pre-antibiotic age, folks did everything they could to prevent disease and though they never really understood it, they often found precautions that seamed to be effective. One for instance was drinking alcohol rather then water or juice as alcohol sterilized the drink. But people didn't always drink alcohol and royalty undoubtedly needed to spend much of their work life sober. So drinking out of a wood cup, which could collect and build up nasty bacteria, just wasn't very smart and was often avoided when possible. Of course, you could also use clay dishes and cups as many do today, but even this was a "poor man's" solution and as we all know, clay likes to break. If we wanted a remedy for that today, we'd just go buy plastic cups and be done with it, but the ancient world didn't have this luxury. So, if you could afford it, you went with gold.

This is just one of the many examples of Gold's mechanical values. Perhaps it's most outstanding value however is it's survivability. We often think of stainless steel and aluminum as non-corrosive metals, yet if you left a coin made of either at the bottom of the ocean for 1000 years, you'd be lucky to find a trace of it. Yet we've found gold that's bee at the bottom of the ocean for thousands of yeas and, after cleaning all the gunk off of it, found it to be in nearly the exact same condition as it was before the ship sank.

It is this sort of property that medieval alchemists were obsessed with and it is here that we find a hidden value in gold.

Alchemists were trying to figure out perfection on earth and they believe Gold to be one of the few substances in nature to be truly perfect. This belief came, not from mystic ideas, but from the actual mechanical properties of the metal.

If you have studied anything about Area 51, undoubtedly you've heard claims about the government finding crashed alien space craft and trying to reverse engineer them so we can figure out how that technology works and make use of it in our own pursuits. This may be pure fiction when it comes to UFOs, but the medieval alchemists were actually doing the very same thing with Gold. In a time when disease was rampant and extreme violence was common place, the desire to find a way to live in harmony, free of disease, violence, starvation etc. was extremely attractive. In fact, it seamed to take priority over ever lasting life, which was considered a possible result of reverse-engineering gold.

Ironically, science has since moved on and the alchemists effort to reverse-engineer gold, also known as the search for the philosopher's stone has since vanished.

Today, there are known examples of gold actually being made by man. First was an accidental discovery by, of all people, the Soviet Union. This happened during all of those rural Soviet Nuclear production experiments that got portrayed in early James Bond movies. It's been reported that; during an experiment, a led shield against nuclear radiation had been transmuted to gold. Unfortunately this was the USSR and under a communist regime gold wouldn't have had the value to individuals that it does in a free society and this all happened under secure, almost war time conditions. There seams to be little known about the details, probably as result.

Later on, a fellow named Glenn Seaborg used a particle accelerator to make gold. Seaborg; a Nobel prize holder, seams to have shared the enthusiasm of the medieval alchemists in search of the philosopher's stone, yet never fulfilled their ultimate goal.

That's where the irony comes in. While we can now MAKE Gold, the mission of the medieval alchemists is far from complete. While making Gold would have sent shock-waves throughout their world, it would have still only been a huge step towards their real goal. For the goal was never to duplicate Gold but to understand how it works so that the means could be applied to human life.

If you really think about it, it appears they were really on to something. Much of our progress is achieved by taking something that works in one area and applying the same concept to a completely different subject matter. The gas piston in an automatic rifle for instance works on the same principal as an automotive car engine.

Perhaps it's time to start looking at the nature of gold and how it's immortality and perfection is achieved. Who knows. We just might discover a major way to significantly improve the body and the mind.

[planeflyer21]

I've chosen to invest in much more valuable metals...lead, brass, and steel.

<thumbsup>

Jon

[Timing]

A while back I traded a case of pmc bronze for a .25oz gold coin.

It would appear that despite many alchemists failures, I have successfully transformed lead and brass into gold.