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Gold Coins and Bullion - News and Discussion
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Fake gold $5 half eagles and fake $10 eagles |
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The Goldismoney forum has an interesting new thread about fake gold $5 half eagles dated 1907 (Coronet head), fake $10 eagles dated 1909 (Indian head) and fake $2 1/2 gold quarter eagles dated 1929 (Indian head) which have been identified. These are deliberate counterfeit coins, not stamped 'Copy'. It would be worth checking coins of these dates, if you see any at a dealer or online. Though these appear convincing, and appear 'worn' as if they were genuine old coins, the reduced weight of the fake coins gives them away, since they are not made of gold, but likely to be brass or a copper alloy. The half eagle weighs 4.6g instead of 8.3, the eagle weighs only 7g instead of 16.7g and the quarter eagle only 2.1g instead of 4.18g. Read the article with good illustrations of the fakes here - fake gold coins in circulation. The lesson here: if you are serious about collecting gold coins, invest in digital weighing scale.
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Gold Prices in different currencies |
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Still on the volatile price of gold - it is increasingly obvious that commentators and traders don't really know what is going to happen next to the price, so they jump on stories like the IMF selling gold or China's plans to buy more as if they offer meaningful clues (both covered in this Kitco thread). On a related theme, Galmarley.com offers charts which show the current and previous movements of gold in various currencies. This is interesting information if you are used to assessing value in terms of your own currency, because the charts are not all the same - currencies of course go up and down in value relative to others, and the charts reflect this. Many of these monthly charts show that whatever the currency gold seems to be settling around a particular value (the equivalent of about US $1000 per ounce), perhaps as a new baseline level.
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The gold price in inflation adjusted dollars |
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The gold price again.... I've been thinking that all the online and print media commentary recently around the price of gold, and the way it has breached the $1000/oz level, has to take account of inflationary changes to be meaningful. So commentators often note that gold has been at higher levels than this if you use inflation-adjusted dollars. For example, gold was at $850/oz in January 1980: in inflation adjusted terms, the price was much higher then, because the dollar was worth so much more. This article in thebull.com.au explores this interesting topic in great detail in the context of warnings from fearful analysts that gold is now 'too high'. Using new charts, it shows that in adjusted terms, gold is not reaching 'new records' at all, and the article concludes that even when taking inflation into account, gold is on a bull run upwards which is not likely to stop. A very good read.
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Boom times for gold miners |
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As this article about gold in the Ely Times, and many others recently have observed, the rising gold price is not only good for those who hold and collect gold, but it is also good for gold miners, and for those areas where gold mining underpins employment and the local economy. But wait, shouldn't any boom in mining add to the availability of gold, and so drive the price down again? Isn't this how capitalism and the market work, to ensure goods or commodities are quickly produced in relation to the demand for them? In fact, as the article notes, gold is a special case, mainly because the world is a much different place to that previously available to gold miners. If you visit historical gold mining areas of the nineteenth century, you usually notice the huge holes and pits, the rusty abandoned machinery, the heaps of spoil and the devastation the mining caused. But nowadays, planning regulations, environmental considerations and the sheer cost of investment needed mean that the lead time from the planning stage to the first gold coming out of a new mine can be as much as ten years. So their won't be floods of new gold coming onto the market soon, only the steady flow we've always known, and higher payment for producers and higher prices for retail buyers of gold bullion and coins. As the article also notes, the world supply of gold is actually declining. So just the sort of thing a smart person would want to collect then?
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Displaying the gold value of any gold coin |
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Here is a neat page which allows you to display the gold value of any gold coin, or 'melt value' based on the current spot price of gold. This facility is so useful I wanted to create such a page for Bullion Gold Coins.com, before I saw it existed already. It covers all standard weight bullion coins, plus historical gold coins of many countries, including the USA, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland. When using the cruzis-coins.com site, just look at the chart to see the current price of gold, type it into the box, press Return and the gold value of every gold coin listed will be shown. For some reason the button the site provides does not work: just type the spot price, press Return and it will work.
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Daily Gold Coins blog
