Buy gold online - quickly, safely and at low prices

Friday, July 16, 2010

Gold Bar Buy Tips - A Discussion of Gold Nuggets As Collectors' Items

Are you looking for gold bar buy tips? The lowly gold nugget has not been shown any interest at all until very recently. Now there are many individuals who have decided that prospecting for gold nuggets is a wonderful and profitable hobby while others would prefer to simply purchase these rare collector's items. Nuggets that are of a good size are now sold for premium prices when in the past they were simply melted down and not given a second thought. The reason for this change in attitude is due to the fact that less than two percent of gold is found in nugget form; the fact that each nugget is thought to be completely unique, much like a snowflake.

Today gold nuggets are so rare they can only be found in parts of Australia, the rivers of California, and some sections of Alaska. Many people go to these areas with metal detectors to find their gold nuggets, which are usually tested to be 92 to 99.6 percent pure gold. For those who think that they could prospect for this type of gold it is important to remember that this is not as easy as it sounds; it takes the right determination, equipment, luck and patience to be successful.

If you are truly interested in gold bar buy tips, it may be interesting to know that during the days of the gold rushes those who found nuggets would simply melt them down and then sell their gold at weight prices. Even when the price of gold was at its highest those who had nuggets had them melted down into bars and sold them in that form.

This was the general practice till 1990, before then all nuggets that were found were melted down. Now prospectors and collectors alike think that finding and acquiring gold nuggets is much more than a hobby since the price of the nuggets is much higher than if you purchase gold at weight; this is due to the fact that gold nuggets are considered one of the world's rarest gemstones. Gold nuggets are even rarer than gold dust since most of the gold bullion which is on the market today is made from gold dust and struck into coins.

The Origin of Gold Dust

The gold nuggets found today are primarily found in Western Australia, Gilmore Creek in Alaska, and Northern California. There are three classifications: Large which are nuggets that weigh up to one troy ounce; medium which are those that weigh between 5 grams and half a troy ounce; and small which are nuggets weighing less than 5 grams. Anything weighing more than an ounce is very rare when it comes to gold nuggets, but the largest ever found weighted 27.7 kilograms and was 46 centimeters in length. It is currently on display at the Golden Nugget Casino in Las Vegas and is named the Hand of Faith.

It is believed that gold nuggets are formed by precipitation of the gold by different chemicals that rise from deep in the earth and distribute the gold deposits to the surface. Unfortunately, all the gold that was once on the earth's surface is already gone and much of what is buried just below the surface has already been found as well. This means there are only very small pockets of gold nuggets left on the earth for us to find.

No comments:

Post a Comment