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1. The most expensive gold coin in
the world
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One of the world's rarest and
most sought after collector coins, the 1933 Double Eagle, was sold at
Sothey's auction house in
New
York on Tuesday 30th July 2002 for the
record sum of $7.59 million.
The coin, featuring a standing
Liberty on one side and an eagle on
the other, was minted in 1933 at the height of the Depression but
never circulated as President Roosevelt abandoned the Gold Standard.
All 445,500 coins, each with a face value of $20, were put into
storage and ordered to be melted down in 1937, but it was not until
the 1940s that it was discovered ten coins had not been returned.
Nine were subsequently recovered but one coin got away and ended up
in the collection of King Farouk of
Egypt. It disappeared
again in the mid 1950s and resurfaced in 1996 when a UK coin dealer attempted to sell it to
undercover Secret Service agents in
New York.
After protracted legal wrangling it was agreed
that the coin be sold at auction with the proceeds split between the
dealer and the US Mint's enterprise fund.
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The World Cup Trophy is 32cm high
and is made of solid 18-carat gold.
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3. Gold doors to a bank in
Oman
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There is a bank in
Oman which has gold doors.
The gilding of doors goes back to ancient times when fire gilding and
later mercury gilding techniques were used on alloys containing gold to
produce a gold-rich surface layer. The famous Corinthian Bronze of the
Roman Empire is an example of this used in the great gate of Herod's
Temple in
Jerusalem.
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Gold has always been recycled
because of its inherent high value, ever since it was first discovered
before the Bronze age. Thus your modern jewellery or dental crown may
contain some gold that was mined in prehistoric times and formed part
of a valued gold artefact or jewellery belonging to royalty or other
high placed official in ancient civilisations. Today, at least 15% of
annual gold consumption is recycled each year.
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5. The first known piece of gold
jewellery
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The earliest gold jewellery dates
from the Sumer
civilisation in between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southern
Iraq
around 3000 BC. A major archeological find of early jewellery was in
the Royal tombs of
Ur, in
Mesopotamia, dated to around 2,600 BC where gold
articles made by lost wax casting included a wild ass on the rein ring
of a chariot. Copper and bronze inlaid with gold also date to this
period, demonstrating the craft skills in metalworking that existed. A
beautifully modelled bull cast in gold dating to 2,300 BC was found in
the
Caucasus in eastern Europe. In
Egypt,
gold jewellery and other artefacts have been found in Pharoah's tombs
dating to around 1500 BC and later.
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6. Most famous piece of gold
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This has to be the face mask of the
boy-king of
Egypt
(1361-1352 BC), Tutankhamun discovered in his tomb in 1922 by Howard
Carter. This tomb preserved some of the greatest treasures of the
goldsmiths art. This face mask is normally on display in the
Cairo museum.
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7. Famous films about gold
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There are many examples of films
centred around man's greed for gold - for example the James Bond film,
Goldfinger, starring Sean Connery, the Italian Job, starring Michael
Caine, the Maltese Falcon and the Lavender Hill Mob.
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