World's wealthy buy physical gold

[Country]

"We had a clear example of a couple buying over a tonne of gold ... and carrying it to another place," Mr. Stadler said, according to the news agency."

A ton of GOLD - How big is 1 ton of gold?
15-inch cube of gold weighs a ton. Yikes!

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_big_is_1_ton_of_gold

How much would 1 ton of GOLD cost?

A METRIC-TON is 1000 KILOS of GOLD (A KILO OF GOLD is 32.15 TROY OZ of GOLD; Tulving sells RCM Kilo bars of GOLD for spot+$8.95 per troy ounce; ($1313+$8.95)*32.15=$42500.69). 1000 KILOS of GOLD would cost you 1000 * $42500.69 = 42,500,692.50. I guess the average Bullionaire could afford a few tons.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/top-business-stories/worlds-super-rich-buying-gold-by-the-bar-and-the-tonne/article1741575/

If you took all the GOLD in the world, how much would that be?

If you look at a page like this one, or if you look it up in an encyclopedia, you will find that the annual worldwide production of gold is something like 50 million troy ounces per year. Gold has a specific gravity of 19.3, meaning that it is 19.3 times heavier than water. So gold weighs 19.3 kilograms per liter. A liter is a cube that measures 10 centimeters (about 4 inches) on a side. There are 32.15 troy ounces in a kilogram. Therefore, the world produces a cube of gold that is about 4.3 meters (about 14 feet) on each side every year. In other words, all of the gold produced worldwide in one year could just about fit in the average person's living room!

This cube weighs 1,555,210 kilograms (3,110,420 pounds). A recent spot price for gold was $256.10 U.S. -- using that number, all of the gold produced in a year is worth $12,805,000,000. [As of today, 10/4/10 the spot price of GOLD is $1313, so that cube of GOLD would now be worth $65,650,001,969.50, chump change for the Goldman Saxe guys on Wall Street; not much left if those rich guys compete for the available GOLD.] That's a lot of money, but not an unimaginable amount. For example, that's about how much the Pentagon spent launching the GPS satellite system. NASA's budget in 1998 was $13.6 billion.

Figuring out the total amount of gold that has been produced by man is a little harder. To get at some kind of estimate, let's figure that the world has been producing gold at 50 million ounces a year for 200 years. That number is probably a little high, but when you figure that the Aztecs and the Egyptians produced a fair amount of gold for a long time, it's probably not too far off. Fifty million ounces * 200 years = 10 billion ounces. Ten billion ounces of gold would fit into a cube roughly 25 meters (about 82 feet) on a side. Consider that the Washington Monument measures 55 feet by 55 feet at its base and is 555 feet tall (17 x 17 x 170 m). That means that if you could somehow gather every scrap of gold that man has ever mined into one place, you could only build about one-third of the Washington Monument.

http://www.howstuffworks.com/question213.htm

[Rodebaugh]

Yeah it was me and the wife. The first 15in cube looked lonely.


No.....the Rodebaughs are working on that ton of copper though

[Rodebaugh]

So how big ia a metric or avoirdupois ton cube of copper?

[Country]

So how big ia a metric or avoirdupois ton cube of copper?

Ok... Let's use the same logic calculating the size of the metric ton of GOLD:

Hmmm. You have weight and you want size. That means you'll need density!

Now, the density can be googled. Gold weighs roughly 19.32 grams per cubic centimeter.
Now, you simply divide the number of grams in a ton by the number of grams per cc, and you get the number of cc's it takes to make a ton.

Assuming you mean a metric ton (1000 kilos), that's 1,000,000 / 19.32 = 51,760 cubic centimeters.

How big is 51,760 cubic centimeters? The dimensions of a cube are easy to find using a calculator: The cube root of 51,760 is 37.26, so you'd have a 37.26-cm cube. That's just under 15 inches on each side - yep, a 15-inch cube of gold weighs a ton. Yikes!

What's the density of COPPER? 8.92 grams per cubic centimeter is the answer. Same equations and logic for COPPER.

A metric ton (1000 kilos), that's 1,000,000 / 8.92 = 112,207 cubic centimeters.

How big is 112,207 cubic centimeters? The cube root of 112,207 is 48.23, so you would have a 48.23-cm cube. That's just under 19 inches on each side. A 19-inch cube of COPPER weighs a ton.

[Country]

If the density of SILVER is 10.5 gm-cubic centimeter, how big would a metric ton of SILVER be? .......

The density of Tungsten is 19.25 gm-cubic centimeter. Now you see why tungsten was used for the fake GOLD bars in the bullion vaults....

[Rodebaugh]

Just a frog hair under 18in per side on that silver cube.

[beauanderos]

So this is what you guys do, waiting for dips? Play with a calculator, when the prices of silver and gold move too fast and you don't want to chase them?

[Country]

So this is what you guys do, waiting for dips? Play with a calculator, when the prices of silver and gold move too fast and you don't want to chase them?

Au-contrair.... Averaging up my friend, AND BUYING ON EVERY DIP, both physical and paper metal.... However, it is always nice to calculate the value of "MY PRETTIES"....

[beauanderos]

I have been spending the past few days attempting to figure out how to leverage faster action on my equities. I have enough precious metals for now, though I do instantly convert any spare cash each month to more silver. I've been looking at the underperformance of large cap miners such as Agnico Eagle and Gold Corp as compared to GLD and the Junior Miners Gold Index GDXJ, and have also been selectively picking up some junior silver miners (Fortuna, Bear Creek, First Majestic, Alexco Resources, US Silver, Genco Resource) in the last week or so. They're up from five to fifteen percent in just this last week, so you can imagine how they might outperform in the continued run-up. I need to look into Great Panther and Mag Silver as well. Time to sell a bit of large cap and put some speculative money into play. AGQ has been quite good for me, btw... up sixty five percent this year. Too bad I sold my SLW so soon, missed a big part of its up move.