Ever since its discovery 5,000 years ago, gold has been treasured for its unmatched luster, beauty and intrinsic value. Today, gold continues to enjoy widespread appeal as an investment and storehouse of value. Gold is an internationally recognized monetary and financial asset held in reserve by major governments. It is so rare that all the gold ever mined could fit into a cube measuring just 20 yards on each side.

What is Gold?
Gold is a heavy, yellow, metallic chemical element. It is a precious metal, with a high degree of ductility and malleability, that is used in the manufacture of a wide range of products including jewelry, electronics, and coinage. Gold forms in high temperature hydrothermal quartz veins. These veins carry the gold to the earth’s surface through super heated solutions and this material deposits in fissures to form ore bodies. Erosion of the host rock by wind and water washes the gold from the ore bodies. Some of the gold stays near the vein and water carries some of the gold into rivers and streams. The gold nuggets found in rivers and streams are known as placer gold while the gold found in ore bodies and veins is known as lode gold. Typically, the old timers would follow placer deposits to the source, or lode gold, and then start hard rock mining. Types of placer gold might be Residual placers, Eluvial placers, Alluvial placers, Eolian placers or Beach placers. See Graphic. See this site, Arizona Outback’s Chris Gholson and his excellent write up Understanding Gold Deposits.

Mineral symbol: Au, hardness: 2.5-3, specific gravity: 19.29, color: golden yellow to white or orange/red

Rare Combinations
Almost all gold mined on Earth is native gold; that is, the gold is in a pure or nearly pure state. Unlike copper, silver, iron and other metals, gold rarely combines with other nonmetallic elements to form complex minerals. It is this quality that also makes it resist corrosion.

However, a few minerals occur in nature that are chemical combinations of gold and nonmetallic elements such as sulfur, selenium and tellurium. These nonnative minerals are rare. Many, though beautiful in their own right, have lost the color and luster of native gold.

In the periodic table of the elements, gold (AU) is centrally located.

Gold With Few Elements
Some samples contain gold combined with tellurium or silver, or both. Many gold deposits are associated with silver. More silver occurs in Earth’s crust than gold; for every seven parts of gold there are 100 parts of silver.

The mineral electrum contains gold and silver (at least 20 percent by weight) in combination. If the silver content is less, then the mineral is considered native gold.

Gold With Many Elements
Some samples combine gold with even less common elements such as antimony, tellurium, palladium, platinum and others. These nonnative gold minerals are less common than the first group.

Montbrayite is very rare. It has only been found in five mines worldwide.

Weight Equivalents
1 troy ounce = 1,097 ordinary ounces
1 troy ounce = 480 grains
1 troy ounce = 31.1 grams
1000 troy ounces = 31.3 kilograms
1 gram = .03215 troy ounces
1 kilogram = 32.15 troy ounces
1 tonne = 32.150 troy ounces
1 ordinary ounce = .9115 troy ounces
1 ordinary pound = 14.58 troy ounces

How is Purity Measured?
The purity of gold articles is generally described in three ways:

Percent Fineness Karats
Parts of gold per 100
Parts of gold per 1000
Parts of gold per 24

100 percent 999 fine 24 karat
91.7 percent 917 fine 22 karat
75.0 percent 750 fine 18 karat
58.3 percent 583 fine 14 karat
41.6 percent 416 fine 10 karat

What Does it Mean?

Gold Filled: Also called gold overlay, a layer of at least 10-karat gold permanently bonded by heat and pressure to one or more surfaces of a support metal, then rolled or drawn to a prescribed thickness. The karat gold must be at least 1/10 by weight of the total metal content.

Rolled Gold Plate: Material consisting of a layer of plating of 10-karat gold or better which is mechanically bonded to a base metal. The karat gold content may be less than 1/20 but must be properly identified by weight in terms of total metal content.

Vermeil: Gold at least 15- micro-inches thick, bonded to sterling silver by an electrolytic or mechanical process.

Gold Leaf: Pure gold that is pounded into sheets applied to other surfaces by hand. Usually about 3 micro-inches thick.

A Store of Value
For thousands of years, gold has played an important part in human society as a medium of exchange; that is, as money. Societies developed systems of money, or currencies, to make trade easier and to replace barter systems. Early Babylonian currencies based on grain used gold to represent the grain’s “stored value.”

Gold currencies powered the expansion of empires in both the ancient and modern worlds. Gold came to be the most accepted currency throughout the world, not only because of its unique properties but also because it is found in most of the inhabited parts of the planet. Gold’s value is recognized everywhere in the world.

Although coins were often silver, gold was preferred as an ultimate store of value, as a portable form of payment and for international trade.

Science of Gold
It has been estimated that, worldwide, the total amount of gold ever mined is 152,000 metric tons, only enough to fill 60 tractor trailers. In comparison, each year 907 million metric tons of iron are produced worldwide. This is equivalent to 6,000 times the total gold produced throughout history.

All the gold that has ever been refined throughout history could be placed in a cube measuring 65.5 feet (20 meters) on a side.

More than 90 percent of all gold ever used has been mined since 1848, when gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill, California, sparking the greatest gold rush of all time.

Gold nuggets are solid lumps of gold. Nuggets are rare, making up less than 2 percent of all native gold ever mined.

Only one out of a billion atoms of rock in Earth’s crust are gold. (If expressed by weight abundance, it is five parts per billion, but by numbers of atoms it is about one atom of gold per billion.)

Oceans are the greatest single reservoir of gold at Earth’s surface, containing approximately eight times the total quantity of gold mined to date. However, the current cost of extracting it is more than the gold is worth.

Gold is so malleable that a single ounce of it (about the size of a quarter) can be beaten into a thin continuous sheet measuring roughly 100 square feet. That means it would take 576 ounces (or just 36 pounds) of gold to completely cover a football field, or a whopping 367,211 ounces (or about 11 tons) of gold to completely blanket all of Central Park.
 
One ounce of gold can be stretched into a thin wire measuring only five microns, or five millionths of a meter, thick, that would reach in a straight line from midtown Manhattan across Long Island Sound to Bridgeport, Connecticut—a distance of 80 kilometers or 50 miles.
 
Nearly 40 percent of all gold ever mined was recovered from South African rocks.

Gold leaf may be only 0.18 microns (seven millionths of an inch) thick; a stack of 7,055 sheets would be no thicker than a dime.

The visors of astronauts’ space helmets receive a coating of gold so thin (0.00005 millimeters, or 0.000002 inches) that it is partially transparent. The astronauts can see through it, but even this thin layer reduces glare and heat from sunlight.

Most gold—78 percent of the yearly gold supply—is made into jewelry. Other industries, mostly electronics, medical, and dental, require about 12 percent. The remaining 10 percent of the yearly gold supply is used in financial transactions.

Culture of Gold
The oldest worked-gold objects, the products of the ancient Thracian civilization, were made as early as 4000 BC, and were discovered at a burial site in Varna, Bulgaria.

In the Aztec language, the name for gold is teocuitlatl, which means “excrement of the gods.”

For the Inka and other peoples of the Andean region of South America, gold was the “sweat of the sun,” the most sacred of all deities.

The original story of El Dorado—“the gilded one”—described a ritual in which the chief of the Andean Muisca nation, covered in gold dust, made offerings of gold into a mountain lake. Spanish conquistadores of the 1530s were gripped by the story; eventually it turned into the legend of a lost city of gold.

Virtually all of the Inkas’ golden treasure was melted down, first in a vain attempt to ransom their captured king. Then, after his execution, more gold was commandeered to fill the coffers of the Spanish treasury.

The “Welcome Stranger,” the largest gold nugget ever recorded, was found in Victoria, Australia, in 1869. It weighed 78 kilograms (about 172 pounds). When it was melted down, it produced 71 kilograms (156 pounds) of pure gold.

The largest gold nugget believed to exist today is the “Hand of Faith,” a 60-pound specimen discovered in Victoria, Australia, in October, 1980. It is currently on display at the Golden Nugget casino in Las Vegas.
 
Today, India is the world’s largest consumer of gold. South Asian jewelry is generally of higher purity than western jewelry—22 karats, compared to 14 karats.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York holds the world’s largest accumulation of monetary gold. The vault is 25 meters (80 feet) beneath the street and holds $147 billion worth of gold bullion. The bedrock of Manhattan is strong enough to support the weight of the vault, its door, and the gold inside. 

Important Dates in the History of Gold

Gold probably was found on the ground and used by prehistoric man as a tool. Highly sophisticated gold art objects and jewelry discovered by archaeologists in the Royal Tombs at Ur, in what is now Southern Iraq, date back to around 3000 BC. Similarly, goldsmiths of the Chavin civilization in Peru were making ornaments by hammering and embossing gold by 1200 BC.

4000 B.C. A culture, centered in what is today Eastern Europe, begins to use gold to fashion decorative objects. The gold was probably mined in the Transylvanian Alps or the Mount Pangaion area in Thrace. 

3000 Egyptians master the art of beating gold into gold leaf and alloying it with other metals. The Sumer civilization of southern Iraq uses gold to create a wide range of jewelry, often using sophisticated and varied styles still worn today.

2500 B.C. Gold jewelry is buried in the Tomb of Djer, king of the First Egyptian Dynasty, at Abydos, Egypt.

1500 B.C. The immense gold-bearing regions of Nubia make Egypt a wealthy nation, as gold becomes the recognized standard medium of exchange for international trade.

The Shekel, a coin originally weighing 11.3 grams of gold, becomes a standard unit of measure in the Middle East. It contained a naturally occurring alloy called electrum that was approximately two-thirds gold and one-third silver.

1350 B.C. The Babylonians begin to use fire assay to test the purity of gold.

1200 B.C. The Egyptians master the art of beating gold into leaf to extend its use, as well as alloying it with other metals for hardness and color variations. They also start casting gold using the lost-wax technique that today is still at the heart of jewelry making.

Unshorn sheepskin is used to recover gold dust from river sands on the eastern shores of the Black Sea. After slucing the sands through the sheepskins, they are dried and shaken out to dislodge the gold particles. The practice is most likely the inspiration for the “Golden Fleece”.

1091 B.C. Squares of gold are legalized in China as a form of money. 

560 B.C. The first coins made purely from gold are minted in Lydia, a kingdom of Asia Minor.

344 B.C. Alexander the Great crosses the Hellespont with 40,000 men, beginning one of the most extraordinary campaigns in military history and seizing vast quantities of gold from the Persian Empire.

300 B.C. Greeks and Jews of ancient Alexandria begin to practice alchemy, the quest of turning base metals into gold. The search reaches its pinnacle from the late Dark Ages through the Renaissance.

202 B.C. During the second Punic War with Carthage, the Romans gain access to the old mining region of Spain and recover gold through stream gravels and hardrock mining.

58 B.C. After a victorious campaign in Gaul, Julius Caesar brings back enough gold to give 200 coins to each of his soldiers and repay all of Rome’s debts.

50 B.C. Romans begin issuing a gold coin called the Aureus.

476 A.D. The Goths depose Emperor Romulas Augustus, marking the fall of the Roman Empire.

1100 AD Venice secures its position as the world’s leading gold bullion market due to its location astride the trade routes to the east. 

1492 “Oh, most excellent gold!” observed Columbus while on his first voyage to America. “Who has gold has a treasure that even helps souls to paradise.”

1511 A.D. The Byzantine Empire resumes gold mining in central Europe and France, an area untouched since the fall of the Roman Empire.

Charlemagne overruns the Avars and plunders their vast quantities of gold, making it possible for him to take control over much of western Europe.

With the Norman conquest, a metallic currency standard is finally re-established in Great Britain with the introduction of a system of pounds, shillings, and pence. The pound is literally a pound of sterling silver.

Marco Polo writes of his travels to the Far East, where the “gold wealth was almost unlimited.”

Venice introduces the gold Ducat, which soon becomes the most popular coin in the world and remains so for more than five centuries.

Great Britain issues its first major gold coin, the Florin. This is followed shortly by the Noble, and later by the Angel, Crown, and Guinea.

Great Britain shifts to a monetary system based on gold and silver.

King Ferdinand of Spain says to explorers, “Get gold, humanely if you can, but all hazards, get gold,” launching massive expeditions to the newly discovered lands of the Western Hemisphere.

1556 A.D. Georgius Agricola publishes De re Metallica, which describes the fire assay of gold during the Middle Ages.

1700 A.D. Gold is discovered in Brazil, which becomes the largest producer of gold by 1720, with nearly two-thirds of the world’s output.

Isaac Newton, as Master of the Mint, fixes the price of gold in Great Britain at 84 shillings, 11 & ½ pence per troy ounce. The Royal Commission, composed of Newton, John Locke, and Lord Somers, recommends a recall of all old currency, issuance of new specie with gold/silver ratio of 16-to-1. The gold price thus established in Great Britain lasted for over 200 years.

1744 A.D. The resurgence of gold mining in Russia begins with the discovery of a quartz outcrop in Ekaterinburg.

1787 A.D. First U.S. gold coin is struck by Ephraim Brasher, a goldsmith.

1792 A.D. The Coinage Act places the United States on a bimetallic silver-gold standard, and defines the U.S. dollar as equivalent to 24.75 grains of fine gold and 371.25 grains of fine silver.

1799 A.D. A 17-pound gold nugget is found in Cabarrus County, North Carolina, the first documented gold discovery in the United States.

1803 North Carolina site of first US gold rush. The state supplies all the domestic gold coined for currency by the US Mint in Philadelphia until 1828. 

1816 A.D. Great Britain officially ties the pound to a specific quantity of gold at which British currency is convertible.

1817 A.D. Britain introduces the Sovereign, a small gold coin valued at one pound sterling.

1828 A.D. North Carolina supplies all the domestic gold coined by the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia for currency.

1830 A.D. Heinrich G. Kuhn announces his discovery of the formula for fired-on Glanz (bright) Gold. It makes Meissen gold-decorated china world famous.

1837 A.D. The weight of gold in the U.S. dollar is lessened to 23.22 grains so that one fine troy ounce of gold is valued at $20.67.

1848 A.D. John Marshall finds flakes of gold while building a sawmill for John Sutter near Sacramento, California, triggering the California Gold Rush and hastening the settlement of the American West.

1850 A.D. Edward Hammong Hargraves, returning to Australia from California, predicts he will find gold in his home country in one week. He discovered gold in New South Wales within one week of landing.

1851 A.D.Australian Gold rushes. The Victorian gold rush, which occurred in Australia in 1851 soon after the California gold rush, was the biggest of several Australian gold rushes. That gold rush was highly significant to Australia’s, and especially Victoria's and Melbourne's, political and economic development. With the Australian gold rushes came the construction of the first railways and telegraph lines, multiculturalism and racism, the Eureka Stockade and the end of penal transportation.

Gold rushes in Australia happened at or around:

Coolgardie
Charters Towers
Kalgoorlie
Bathurst
Bendigo
Ballarat
Hill End

In 1852 alone, 370,000 immigrants arrived in Australia and the economy of the nation boomed. The 'rush' was well and truly on. Victoria contributed more than one third of the world's gold output in the 1850s and in just two years the State's population had grown from 77,000 to 540,000.

The number of new arrivals to Australia was greater than the number of convicts who had landed there in the previous seventy years. The total population trebled from 430,000 in 1851 to 1.7 million in 1871.

1859 A.D. Comstock lode of gold and silver is struck in Nevada.

1862 A.D. Latin Monetary Union is established setting fineness, weight, size, and denomination of silver and gold coins of France, Italy, Belgium and Switzerland (and Greece in 1868) and obligating all to accept each other’s current gold and silver coins as full legal tender.

The Cariboo gold rush boomed as a result of the Fraser River gold rush. The Cariboo Gold Rush was a gold rush in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Although the first gold discovery was made in 1859 at Horsefly Creek by Peter Dunlevy, followed by more strikes at Keithley Creek and Antler Horns lake in 1860, the actual rush did not begin until 1861, when these discoveries were widely publicized. By 1862, following the strikes at Williams Creek, the rush was in full swing.

1868 A.D. George Harrison, while digging up stones to build a house, discovers gold in South Africa – since then, the source of nearly 40% of all gold ever mined.

1873 A.D. As a result of ongoing revisions to minting and coinage laws, silver is eliminated as a standard of value, and the United States goes on an unofficial gold standard.

1887 A.D. A British patent is issued to John Steward MacArthur for the cyanidation process for recovering gold from ore. The process results in a doubling of world gold output over the next twenty years.

1896 A.D. William Jennings Bryan delivers his famous “Cross of Gold” speech at the Democratic national convention, urging a return to bimetallism. The speech gains him the party’s presidential nomination, but he loses in the general election to William McKinley.

Two prospectors discover gold while fishing in the Klondike River in northern Canada, richer finds were rumored farther south in Alaska's Yukon, spawning the Alaska Gold Rush in 1898 -- the last gold rush of the century.

1899 A.D. Future President of the United States Herbert Hoover, a mining engineer, led his company to several long lasting gold discoveries in Western Australia

1900 A.D. The Gold Standard Act places the United States officially on the gold standard, committing the United States to maintain a fixed exchange rate in relation to other countries on the gold standard.

1903 A.D. The Engelhard Corporation introduces an organic medium to print gold on surfaces. First used for decoration, the medium becomes the foundation for microcircuit printing technology.

1913 A.D. Federal Reserve Act specifies that Federal Reserve Notes be backed 40% in gold.

1914 A.D.  World War One in Europe.

1919 A.D. A strict gold standard is suspended by several countries, including United States and Great Britain, during World War I.

1922 A.D. King Tutankhamen's tomb (1352 BC) opened to reveal a 2,448 lb. gold coffin and hundreds of gold and gold-leafed objects.  

1925 A.D. Great Britain returns to a gold bullion standard, with currency redeemable for 400-ounce gold bullion bars but no circulation of gold coins.

1927 A.D. An extensive medical study conducted in France proves gold to be valuable in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.

1931 A.D. Great Britain abandons the gold bullion standard.

1933 A.D. To alleviate the banking panic, President Franklin D. Roosevelt prohibits private holdings of all gold coins, bullion, and certificates.

1934 A.D. The Gold Reserve Act of 1934 gives the government the permanent title to all monetary gold and halts the minting of gold coins. It also allows gold certificates to be held only by the Federal Reserve Banks, putting the U.S. on a limited gold bullion standard, under which redemption in gold is restricted to dollars held by foreign central banks and licensed private users.

President Roosevelt reduces the dollar by increasing the price of gold to $35 per ounce

1935 A.D. Western Electric Alloy #1 (69% gold, 25% silver, and 6% platinum) finds universal use in all switching contacts for AT&T telecommunications equipment.

1937 A.D. The bullion depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky, is opened.

1942 A.D. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issues a presidential edict closing all U.S. gold mines.

1944 A.D. The Bretton Woods agreement, ratified by the U.S. Congress in 1945, establishes a gold exchange standard and two new international organizations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. The new standard involves setting par values for currencies in terms of gold and the obligation of member countries to convert foreign official holdings of their currencies into gold at these par values.

1945 A.D. Gold-backing of Federal Reserve Notes is reduced by 25.5%

1947 A.D. The first transistor is assembled at AT&T Bell Laboratories. The device uses gold contacts pressed into a germanium surface.

1954 A.D. London gold market, closed early in World War II, reopens.

1960 A.D. AT&T Bell Laboratories is granted the first patent for the invention of the laser. The device uses carefully positioned gold coated mirrors to maximize infrared reflection into the lasing crystal.

The European Rheumatism Council confirms intravenously administered gold is an effective treatment for rheumatoid arthritis.

1961 A.D. Americans are forbidden to own gold abroad as well as at home.

The central banks of Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, West Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States form the London Gold Pool and agree to buy and sell at $35.0875 per ounce.

1965 A.D. Col. Edward White makes the first space walk during the Gemini IV mission, using a gold-coated visor to protect his eyes from direct sunlight. Gold-coated visors remain a standard safety feature for astronaut excursions.

1967 A.D. South Africa produces the first Krugerrand. This 1- ounce bullion coin becomes a favorite of individual investors around the world.

1968 A.D. London Gold Market closes for two weeks after a sudden surge in the demand for gold.

The governors of the central banks in the gold pool announce they will no longer buy and sell gold in the private market. A two-tier pricing system emerges: official transactions between monetary authorities are to be conducted at an unchanged price of $35 per fine troy ounce, and other transactions are to be conducted at a fluctuating free-market price.

U.S. Mint terminates policy of buying gold from and selling gold to those licensed by the U.S. Treasury to hold gold.

Gold-backing of Federal Reserve Notes is eliminated.

Intel introduces a microchip with 1,024 transistors interconnected with invisibly small gold circuits.

1970 A.D. The charge-coupled device is invented at Bell Telephone Laboratories. First used to record the faint light from stars, the device, which uses gold to collect the electrons generated by light,eventually is used in hundreds of civilian and military devices, including home video cameras.

1971 A.D. On August 15, U.S. terminates all gold sales or purchases, thereby ending conversion of foreign officially held dollars into gold; in December, under the Smithsonian Agreement signed in Washington, the U.S. devalues the dollar by raising the official dollar price of gold to $38 per fine troy ounce.

The colloidal gold marker system is introduced by Amersham Corporation of Illinois. Tiny spheres of gold are used in health research laboratories worldwide to mark or tag specific proteins to reveal their function in the human body for the treatment of disease.

1973 A.D. On February 13, U.S. devalues the dollar again and announces it will raise the official dollar price of gold to $42.22 per fine troy ounce. Dollar-selling continues, and finally all currencies are allowed to “float” freely, without regard to the price of gold. By June, the market price in London has risen to more than $120 per ounce.

Japan lifts prohibition on imports of gold.

1974 A.D. Americans permitted to own gold, other than just jewelry, as of December 31.

1975 A.D. The U.S. Treasury holds a series of auctions at which is accepts bids for gold in the form of 400-ounce bars. In January, 754,000 troy ounces are sold and another 499,500 more in June.

1975 A.D. Trading in gold for future delivery begins on New York’s Commodity Exchange and on Chicago’s International Monetary Market and Board of Trade.

The Krugerrand is launched on to the U.S. Market.

1976 A.D. The Gold Institute is established to promote the common business interests of the gold industry by providing statistical data and other relevant information to its members, the media, and the public, while also acting as an industry spokesperson.

1978 A.D. Amended IMF articles are adopted, abolishing the official IMF price of gold, gold convertibility and maintenance of gold value obligations; gold is eliminated as a significant instrument in IMF transactions with members; and the IMF is empowered to dispose of its large gold holdings. By Act of Congress, the U.S. abolishes the official price of gold. Member governments are free to buy and sell gold in private markets.

1978 A.D. A weak U.S. dollar propels interest in gold, aided by such events as the U.S. recognition of Communist China, events in Iran and Sino-Vietnamese border disturbances.

U.S. Congress passes the American Arts Gold Medallion Act, representing the first official issue of a gold piece for sale to individuals in almost half a century.

Japan lifts ban on gold exports, touching off a “gold rush” among investors who can sell as well as buy.

1979 A.D. The Canadian 1-ounce Maple Leaf is introduced.

1980 A.D. Gold reaches intra-day historic high of $870 on January 21 in New York and by year-end closes at $591.

1980 A.D. IMF sells one-third of its gold holdings, 25 million troy ounces to IMF members at SDR 35/ounce in proportion to members’ shares of quotas on August 31, 1975, and 25 million troy ounces at a series of public auctions for the benefit of developing member countries.

1980 A.D. U.S. Treasury sells 15.8 million troy ounces of gold to strengthen the U.S. trade balance.

1981 A.D. Treasury Secretary Donald Regan announces the formation of a Gold Commission “to assess and make recommendations with regard to the policy of the U.S. government concerning the role of gold in domestic and international monetary systems.”

The first space shuttle is launched, using gold-coated impellers in its liquid hydrogen fuel pump.

1982 A.D. Congress passes Olympic Commemorative Coin Act, which includes issuing the first legal tender U.S. gold coin since 1933.

1982 A.D. U.S. Gold Commission report recommends no new monetary role for gold, but supports a U.S. gold bullion coin.

New gold deposits are discovered in North America and Australia.

Canada introduces the fractional Maple Leaf coins in sizes of ¼ ounce and 1/10 ounce.

China introduces the Panda bullion coin.

1986 A.D. The first new gold jewelry alloy this century, 990- Gold (1% titanium) is introduced to meet the need for an improved durability of 99% pure gold traditionally manufactured in Hong Kong. The very malleable alloy is easily worked into intricate design, but can be converted into a hard, durable alloy by simply heating it in an oven.

The American Eagle Gold Bullion Coin is introduced by the U.S. Mint.

Treasury resumes purchases of newly mined gold.

Goldcorp Australia issues the Nugget gold bullion coin.

Gold-coated compact discs are introduced. The goldcoated discs provide perfection of reflective surfaces, eliminate pinholes common to aluminum surfaces, and exclude any possibility of oxidative deterioration of the surfaces. 

1987 A.D. British Royal Mint introduces the Britannia Gold Bullion Coin.

World stock markets suffer sharp reversal on October 19; volatile investment markets increase gold trading activity.

The World Gold Council is established to sustain and develop demand for the end uses of gold.

1988 A.D. The international media report huge gold purchases by a “mystery” buyer, later reveled to be the Japanese government in preparation for the minting of a major commemorative coin. This coin, honoring the sixtieth anniversary of Emperor Hirohito’s reign, is issued in November.

1989 A.D. Austria introduces the Philharmoniker bullion coin. 1990 A.D. United States becomes the world’s second largest gold producing nation.

1992 A.D. World Gold Council introduces the Gold Mark as an international identification mark for gold jewelry.

1993 A.D. Germany lifts its value added tax restrictions on financial gold, causing a resurgence of private demand of gold.

India and Turkey liberalize their gold markets.

1994 A.D. Russia formally establishes a domestic gold market.

1996 A.D. The Mars Global Surveyor is launched with an onboard gold-coated parabolic telescope-mirror that will generate a detailed map of the entire Martian surface over a two-year period.

1997 A.D. Congress passes Taxpayers Relief Act, allowing US Individual Retirement Account holders to buy gold bullion coins and bars for their accounts as long as they are of a fineness equal to, or exceeding, 99.5% percent gold.

1999 A.D. The Euro, a pan-European currency, is introduced, backed by a new European Central Bank holding 15% of its reserves in gold.

2000 A.D. Astronomers at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii use the giant gold-coated mirrors of the most detailed images of Neptune and Uranus ever captured.

2002 A.D. The Gold Institute’s Board of Directors votes to dissolve the association and consolidate its activities within the National Mining Association, effective

January 1, 2003. The decision was made against the backdrop of consolidation in the gold sector and changes in the general business climate.

2009 A.D. Gold price reaches $1061 per ounce on the open market.

Sources

The majority of this information came from the excellent work of the National Mining Association "History of Gold" and from other sources around the internet.