Actually, even the slightly-alloyed gold coins are still fairly soft, as the nail-mark on my 1oz kruggerand can attest; and I wouldn’t say I have particuarly strong fingers. But I think it is harder than pure gold, and the color does not appear as deep as the rare 24k jewlery I have seen, though that might be due to the difference between an uncirculated coin and a worn piece of jewelery (24k rings accumulate scratches and dents like nobody’s business).
23.904k.
(trying to set a recond for consecutive posts) Incidentally, Kruggerands and American Eagles are 22k, which is .916, not .996. So we’re talking about a much greater amount of alloy metals than just .004.
I stand corrected. Thanks, Gaudere!
“You’d think that I would be aware?” Excuse me?
Gold isn’t steel, water, or a semiconductor in pure form. If you want to discuss solid solutions of money metals, then kindly grab a binary phase diagram of gold-silver or gold-copper (or a gold-silver-copper ternary phase diagram). And see where 0.4% copper or 0.4% silver puts you on it. Note that I’m ignoring rhodium, as that is not typically added to bullion.
0.4% C in steel is significant. Very, very significant. This is no way means that 0.4% of anything in anything else is significant. Changes properies, sure, depending also on whether the gold is as-cast or annealed too. I would like someone to demonstrate, without trying to talk down to me, that 0.4% silver or copper, other than changing lustre, is going to have a significant effect on the hardness or the Young’s modulus of gold.
Or you know, since it’s taken 21 minutes to post this, just never mind now. I have no idea when I’ll be back, and I can see where this is heading. AFAIK, that small of amount of alloy (0.4% or less) is not going to signifcantly change gold’s properties in use for bullion, but I’m happy to be proven incorrect about that. However, implying that somehow I have forgotten about solid solutions of metals, freezing point depression, semiconductors, and all those graduate engineering courses I took in materials science, is … wrong.
There was a alloy that they were pitching a few years back, of 1% titanium and 99% gold. The end result was an alloy as strong as normally-alloyed 14k. Given that, I would think that about half that amount of titanium would still significantly harden the gold, perhaps to 18k levels or so. I agree with you (though note that I am NO metallurgist) that .04 silver or copper would probably not harden gold a significant amount, though platinum, palladium or even nickel might. But all of this beside the point, anyway, since the coins in question are not .996. So no need to get irate. 
Polycarp said, in part
Poly, if I’m reading you correctly, you’re incorrect.
Are you actually suggesting that the US “… as a nation do have gold and silver in reserve to cover those pieces of fancy paper?”
We couldn’t possibly have enough gold and silver to back up our currency? Could we?
Gold and silver have had nothing to do with US currency since 1968. We’re running on faith alone, just like every other country that quit the standards before us.
Nah, we don’t even bother with that. Sure, having 262 million ounces of the stuff is handy, but we gave up a long time ago. It used to be paper money was a sort of warehouse ‘receipt’ for money. Gold is Money. But not anymore, sort of. Now the thing that used to represent the thing called Money is now, by government decree, Money. Neat trick, but more on that later.
Actually, it was FDR who “called in” all gold coins, notes and forbade contracts in gold. Technically, it was illegal to own bullion in the US until 1975.
The Bretton Woods agreement after World War II fixed the price of gold at 35 dollars an ounce, and Treasury stood ready to both buy and sell gold at that price to foreign central banks. Most countries linked their currencies to the US dollar, and indirectly, to gold. This system worked fairly well until the massive social spending of “the great society” and huge expenditures necessary to conduct the war in Vietnam. Foreign governments no longer wanted to sell gold at $35 an ounce, they wanted to buy it with the flood of paper dollars the US was pumping around the world.
Up until that time, there was a federal requirement that their be a 25 per cent backing of all Treasury Bonds by gold. Nixon had no choice but to sever the remaining link to gold, allowing the dollar to “float” against other currencies. There was a period of wrenching inflation, an oil crisis, and numerous other problems as a result. Fiscal sanity need not necessarily rely on that ‘barbarous relic’ as gold is termed, but the fact remains that the track record of paper currency is dismal-- every single one has failed so far.
How about:
Why were US citizens prohibited from owning gold bullion?
Anyone else remember when US treasury note were ‘silver certificates’, redeemable for silver bullion (but only in large quantities)? Were US citizens allowed to redeem them?
William Jennings Bryant - where have ye gone?
Why were US citizens outlawed from owning bullion?
Because we were “hoarding” that’s why. Presumably, the 262 million ounces of the official stocks of US gold aren’t “hoarding.”
FDR ‘called in’ all coins, certificates, and notes, and repudiated the war bonds payable in gold. The price before the confiscation was something like $20 an ounce, and immediately afterwords the price was arbitrarily set at $35 an ounce, netting the government billions. The idea was to stimulate a mild inflation, as the US was suffering a drastic deflation. Why buy durable goods today when the price next week will be dramatically lower? People had money at the time, but they were scared to spend it. In this age of affluence and governmental largesse, it’s very difficult to imagine. In those days, if you didn’t have a job, you could very well starve. During the Draft for World War II, a very high percentage of potential recruits were disqualified because of the effects of chronic malnutrition.
The Silver Certificates circulated along with Federal Reserve Notes and were redeemable for a Silver Dollar. In later years the redemption became popular since the government was issuing old Morgan dollars which sold for a premium. Towards the end, the gov’t. resorted to redeeming them with silver granules. By 1968 they reneged on their obligation, and refused redemption.
Tedster Do you know what the percentage of rejectees was? I’d be curious.
Really? Has the Canadian dollar failed? The pound? The mark? The yen? The U.S. dollar? Failed? Worthless? Or just not perfect?
Give it time. Paper money is, well, Paper. You’ve never heard of some expedition to recover some ancient monarch’s checkbook, have you? Didn’t think so.
The US Dollar has lost over 90 per cent of its value in the last 30 years, easy. There are several paper currencies I can think of that have failed completely, the Reichsmark and some wacko yugoslav note off the top of my head.
What I meant by that statement is that no paper currency yet has lasted any appreciable length of time. All have failed so far, I should say. Certainly none have lasted more than a couple hundred years. The US is rather unique in that respect, though. Gold and silver have easily lasted 3000 years, probably far longer. I think
But Ted, your argument was that they had all failed. ed. past tense. Not that they all will fail. Given time, the sun will go nova and we will all be toast. The question is when, and will we have something better by then. Frankly, even if we went back to a gold standard, there wouldn’t be enough gold to back the money out there. Gold is kaput in the current economy for a lot of reasons.
Not a big deal but if you use this phrase conversationally some people might give you a funny look. It’s normally termed “case in point”.
Well, they all have failed, and I don’t expect the current crop to be any different. I’m quite certain they will, long before we go supernova as well.
Paper money is an alchemists dream. Take, for example, a $50 gold “eagle.” If you were to somehow obtain suitable dies, and start minting your own gold coins of the same or better purity, identical in every pertinent respect – Would anyone care? Not likely.
Compare this with counterfeiting your own paper money. You use the same or better quality paper, similar ink, and high quality engraving. Would anyone care? Absolutely. The fundamental problem is the “unit of account.” What is a “Dollar” then? It used to be specified as a fixed amount of some substance. Can you imagine the outcry if a Gallon or Foot varied?
“The Yard lost several inches in heavy trading against the Meter yesterday, back to you Ron…”
Inflation is nothing more than a hidden ‘tax’ on wealth. While I am not arguing for a gold standard, there is a certain elegance to basing the “unit of account” on a substance that is rare and un-counterfeitable and immune to the vagaries of politics and expediency. Perhaps this is why we don’t use it anymore.
Modern financial transactions are largely done electronically, but I have no illusions that the same financial wizardry foisted upon us in the past won’t continue in the new format, if you will.
Money 2.0 indeed.
My God, HH, something on which we agree!! “Free and unlimited coinage of silver…” 
BTW, you’ve confused William Jennings Bryan with William Cullen Bryant in quoting the name. The Boy Orator of the Platte would not be happy with you.
Actually, what I meant by that paragraph everyone has challenged was that the Federal Reserve Notes are backed by the credit of the United States, and that part of what makes that credit good is our gold reserves – not that the paper money is itself backed by the reserves. I’d thought that was clear by my noting the earlier cases that held that paper money redeemable in gold or silver was legitimate legal tender, and then drawing the extension to paper money backed exclusively by U.S. credit. Sorry if I pulled a red herring across our path by the way I phrased it.
Poly -
Ummm… the “Free Sliver” dude was WJB (see ‘Cross of Gold’ speech here )
He was also the prosecution’s star at the Scope Trial (and died 5 days after his victory (mabbe I gotta start goin’ to church, after all). 
WCB seems to have been a poet and, later, editor of the NY Evening Post.
Am I confused? (again?)
Yep…no argument. You’d gotten a final T on the last name, which made me think you had WCB (whose name is “Bryant”) mixed with WJB (“Bryan”).
There’s a really fascinating essay by Stephen Jay Gould on Bryan and the essential consistency of his views, at least in his own mind, in one of his collections (I think Bully for Brontosaurus but don’t hold me to that).
Oh, and he supported “Free Silver” – ‘The “Free Sliver” dude’ was William Somethingorotherelse Bruin, who founded the unfinished furniture business.
The 1950s nutrition author Adele Davis addressed this in her book. Unfortunately, I can’t find my copy and I don’t think that there is a copy in the entire County library system.
Nonetheless: “Fools charge where brave men fear to tread” so I’ll give my memory a try even though it’s been several years. I think that she reported one out of seven failed the WW II Army enterance physical exam–usually for flat feet which, as I remember, she attributed to insufficient protein as a growing-child.
Adele was an early nutrition-author and so was very careful with her research, figures, and documentation. If my memory is correct, then 1/7 is probably pretty accurate, straight from the Army’s Medical Department.