2019 - OZ 3 The
Royal Mint of Perth
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| The Perth Mint |
Gold! Wherever there is gold, people go to find
it, dig it up, rub it, hold it, and admire it. The urge to possess gold in some
people is very strong. It’s called Gold Fever and it can be contagious. History
is full of episodes of owning gold. The Gold Standard was the economic backbone
of the U.S. for a long time. French Aristocracy loved their gold coins. Gold
covered God Statues show the attraction for gold.
Gold, Gold, Gold.
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| Sculpture of the 1991 Gold Strike |
Carol
found an advertisement that Perth has a Royal Mint and a Museum with a little show
to make us understand how gold is processed at this Mint.
She
also said, it’s not far away, we can walk to it. It’s just a few blocks away
from our Hotel.
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| That's a Lot of |
And the visit was ‘worth’ it. How much worth? For Carol it was worth her weight in Gold. The Mint told her ‘if’ she were to be paid for her weight she would be worth: $ 4,495,750 dollars.
Mine
was a tad more, ahem: $7,064,750 for me,
it just shows you…. I am no light weight!
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| Tour Guide Explaining the Process |
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| Pouring Off the Molten Gold |
It was an informative visit. A ‘performance’ of a meltdown helped us to understand how gold is melted into bullion. A whole small ‘smithy’ was set up, with the instructor really melting down gold and then forming it into a brick. Fascinating!
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| After Cooling With Water - A Gold Bar From Nuggets |
Ah, GOLD! It was
found and dug up in Western Australia and so
much gold was found that Australia decided to build a mint in 1899 in the city
of Perth. It was the first Mint operated by Australia. In the first 2 decades
after opening the goldfields in Western Australia 800 TONNES of gold were
processed. In Monetary value?
Just over 100 million pounds
Sterling: Depending on the rate and
time: over 130 million U.S. $ worth. It would be worth a lot more if the
information given to me was the number in the year 1900.
Gold brings out the greed, the speculation, the drive for riches.
Stamping Gold Coins
Possession of gold does something to the brain: it disregards ‘nice’. It squanders resources. Gold might cause a mental breakdown, the NEED to possess it is like a radiation illness, you can’t feel it but you can see the bad results in later years.
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| Weights - 1896 |
Australia had many ‘gold rushes’. Some not reported, some
in the Eastern Half of the continent, there is a whole slew of people digging
for gold, for treasure, for a relief of poverty, for all kinds of reasons. Gold
takes over, reasoning is left behind. Gold = Money. Some people just can’t get enough of it.
There
were some really nice examples of the nuggets found near Perth in the Museum.
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| Golden Beauty |
"Golden Beauty” is a blob of gold weighing 11.46 KG (368.60 ozs) in today’s gold prices worth: $ 694,490.32 dollars. A good find if you could just ‘find’ it.
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| Newmont, Normandy Nugget, 2nd Largest Still In Existance |
But how about this one: the Newmont, Normandy Nugget found in 1995 in Newmont, Normandy, Western Australia. It’s a nugget with a weight of 819.02 ozs. Worth $ 1,543,140.15 dollars.
And
a guy just walking around in a dried up riverbed, found this blob of gold,
right there, under his feet, kind of ‘stepped ‘ on it.
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| More Huge Nuggets |
No
wonder men and women scour the neighborhood in the old goldfields looking for
GOLD.
You
might think this was then and that does not happen any longer? Oh, yeah?
I
met a fellow who walks around the old goldfields with a metal detector. He
finds small amounts, small flakes of gold here and there but at $ 1884.13/oz in
today’s market it does not take a lot of GOLD to make some serious money.
Yes,
he just walked around, picks up gold and then sells it.
Yes,
he was kind of a hippy kind of a guy, but hey… Gold is gold. That was his
‘work’. He lived off of it! One (1) gram
of gold is worth (depending on purity) between $ 30 to $ 50 dollars.
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| A 1 Million Dollar Coin |
Did
you catch the Gold Fever yet? All these
numbers make you think?
All
you have to be is ‘lucky’!!!
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| Other Side of the Coin |
Just in case you wonder what BIG looks like… here is a picture of just ONE gold coin on display at the mint. This ONE coin weighs a TON and it is worth over $ 50,000,000.00 dollars. That is Fifty Million… count all the zeros.
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| Australian Souvenir |
Carol
was lucky! She received a nice pendant
made with Gold. No, not ‘of’ gold, I said ‘with’ Gold. Pure Gold items at the
mint, in the store were beautiful but also extremely pricey.
Here
are some pictures of some items for sale in the Perth Mint.
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| Exquisite and Expensive |
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| But Its Not a BMW |
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