I’m just curious about how easy or difficult it is to buy a gold brick in the United States. I realize the price will fluctuate with market, so I’m just looking for an approximate price at this time.
I read once that a brick of gold weighs 26lbs. I was shocked that something that small would be so heavy, but if true, you could calculate the cost by using the current value of a troy ounce of gold. Isn’t it usually printed in newspapers next to stock prices?
The current pure gold per-ounce price that I found is around USD $431. So that means a brick … ? Are they really worth that much?
This site says the most common size bar used for intl. transactions is 400 troy ounces. That is a pretty small volume of gold, as it would make a brick of about 6" x 3" x 2". That brick would be worth $172,400 at $431 per troy ounce. I had always imaged gold bars a lot bigger than that.
A cube of gold only 1" per side would be just over 10 troy ounces and be worth about $4,387! Also, a million dollars worth of gold would weigh 159 lbs. and make a bar 12"x6"x3" (approx).
I keep a kilogram of tungsten on my desk. It is practically the same density as gold and is about the size of a D-cell battery. I had one visitor pick it up and he swore it had to be a magnet that was attracted to the (non-metal) desk because it was so hard to lift for its size. The fact that it remained heavy when held in his hand away from the desk didn’t seem to register with him. Not a physics major 
A one thousand ounce bar of gold weighs about 68 lbs, and is about ten inches long, and a bit more than three by three inches in cross section, and will cost you in the general neighborhood of a third to a half of a million dollars. That gets you “Delivered” bullion. Delivered means on deposit at a banking institution that guarantees to hold it for a price, and allows you to sell it again without an assay. Bring your pickup truck to the back door of the bank, and you can lug that sucker on home, but call up in advance, and let them know about your plans, since they won’t be expecting you. They will want money for that service.
Now you have a brick that you will have to have assayed, if you try to sell it on the gold market, so you have to lug it back to the bank, and they will want another fee to take it back and have it verified. Then you can pay storage agreements fees like everyone else, until you sell the thing.
Most folks just hold the paper, and let the actual block of gold sit in one place, changing owners as the whim drives human markets.
Tris
Rule of Reason: “If nobody uses it, there’s a reason.”
Hey! That sounds cool.
Where can I get a kilogram of tungsten for my desk?
I got it from these folks eBay store. It looks like they don’t have any at the moment.
I’d love to get one of these, but I’m afraid to ask the cost!
It is almost impossible to pick it up, also. My Dad worked in an Alaskan gold smelting operation prior to WWII, and the boss bet Dad that Dad could pick one of them up without a tool- the boss (likely in jest ) said that if dad could, he could keep it. Dad was very strong for his size, and claimed he almost got it off the ground (note- it was flat on the ground), scaring the crap out of the foreman. Of course, Gold wasn’t anywhere near as valuable then, but still that was a huge sum, and like dad said, he was pretty sure the boss was just kidding- but the bragging rights would have been huge.
I have to admit I somewhat doubted Dad’s tale, as hell, any guy in decent shape can “clean & jerk” 68 pounds right? Well, the problem is- you can’t get your fingers underneath the bar. I found that out because in HS, I worked in a Shipping dept, and we had a full sized anvil to ship. I was pretty damn strong, and could bench well over 200#, but that 55# (or was it 75#?) anvil was impossible to pick up off the floor by putting your fingers under it.
I have handled the smaller gold bars while working as a guard- they are suprisingly heavy. Once you got one up, you could carry it in one hand- I guess they weighed about 25#, so Cisco is probably right. And yoyodyne’s story I beleive, too.
I wonder if they make a Plutonium version…
They used to, but they tried to make a big one, and the plant vaporized.
Over thirty years ago I read an article about the world’s largest gold repository – not Ft. Knox, but the Federal Reserve Bank in New York. The vault there held not just U.S. gold but bullion of many countries. If China bought six million dollars worth of wheat from Canada, an order would come down and the workers would go to China’s niche, stack the requisite number of bars onto a hand truck, trundle it over to Canada’s niche, and unload them there. The vault’s floor was oak and would need to be replaced every five years or so (those trucks were heavy). The old floor would be ripped up and burrned; enough gold would be recovered to pay for the replacement.
DD
If you go to the Royal Canadian Mint in Ottawa, they have a gold ingot on display that you can pick up. It’s chained to the floor and there’s a Royal Canadian Mint police officer present at all times, but you can handle it.
It weighs 400 troy ounces and is 99.99 % pure, the highest purity standard in the world. The Royal Canadian Mint was the first mint in the world to offer this standard of purity. According to the Google calculator, 1 troy ounce = 31.1034768 grams, so 400 troy oz. would be 12,441.39072 grams, or 12.441 kg, which is roughly 27.37 lbs avoirdupois. So, not as heavy as a curling stone.
The Royal Canadian Mint website says that the ingot is worth “more than $200,000”. When I toured the Mint last fall, the Mint cop told me that it was close to 220,000 at the time. (Canadian , naturally).
He also commented on the same thing that DrDeth mentions: if the ingot is made like an ordinary brick, with 90° corners, it’s very difficult to pick up. That’s why the top of the ingot is narrower than the bottom, with the sides sloping in - makes it easier to get a grip.
(I don’t know the term for that kind of a shape: any geometrists around who can help?)
The 3-D version of an isosceles trapezium? I don’t know whether it has a name.
[QUOTE=Northern Piper
He also commented on the same thing that DrDeth mentions: if the ingot is made like an ordinary brick, with 90° corners, it’s very difficult to pick up. That’s why the top of the ingot is narrower than the bottom, with the sides sloping in - makes it easier to get a grip.
(I don’t know the term for that kind of a shape: any geometrists around who can help?)[/QUOTE]
An isosceles trapezoidal prism would be close. Or if the ends slant in as well, a truncated rectangular-based pyramid.
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- If all four lateral sides slope, then it could be considered a frustrum --a pyramid (of any number of lateral sides) with its top “cut off”.
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- If all four lateral sides slope, then it could be considered a frustrum --a pyramid (of any number of lateral sides) with its top “cut off”.
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- So let me get this straight: you order a bar of gold, there’s a transportation charge, that I understand. And if you want them to store it for you, there’s a storage charge, that too I can see. But if you don’t want them to store it, you have to pay more money to get it from them? What a crock of sh!t.
~
Talk about a truly awesome bowling ball…
Here’s a way to make a million dollars.
[ul]
[li]Buy one of those bricks.[/li][li]Swallow it.[/li][li]Have someone videotape you defecating it out.[/li][li]Put the video on the internet.[/li][li]Charge $.99 per download to watch someone literally shitting a gold brick.[/li][/ul]
The plan is flawless, I tell you. 
In the 1930s, the then-Aga Khan celebrated the anniversary of his ascendency to the position and was presented with his weight in gold as a gift from his followers. Several years later they repeated the gesture, but this time they used diamonds.
As I pointed out in another thread - I want that job.
The OP was on about getting obtaining a gold brick but I think in the United States that is illegal.
Certainly some gold may be owned by individuals today (jewelry, coins, etc.) but full blown gold ingots I am not so sure.
I know FDR issued an executive order to confiscate gold from Americans back in the Depression. The people gold was taken from got paper money for it but price of gold was then raised effectively devaluing the dollar thus robbing the people who had owned gold of money.
I thought this was repealed back int he 70’s but I am unsure if it was repealed in its entirety or just modified. Anyone know?
That said you can certainly buy and sell gold on the markets but as someone else mentioned you never actually get the gold in hand…it is all a paper transaction. I’m pretty sure you can’t toddle down to Ft. Knox and demand the gold bar you bought.