A good friend told me about the American Numismatic Association (ANA), an educational non-profit organization educating and encouraging people to study and collect money and related items. Dedicated to serving people with an interest in Numismatics with nearly 33,000 members.
The ANA helps all people discover and explore the world of money through its vast array of programs including its education and outreach, museum, library, publications, conventions and seminars.
http://www.money.org
American Numismatic Association sponsors the World's Fair of Money
http://www.worldsfairofmoney.com/index.php?id=125
In 1936, the U.S. Treasury Department began construction of the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky, on land transferred from the military. The Gold Vault was completed in December 1936 at a cost of $560,000, or about $7.5 million in 2007 dollars. The site is located on what is now Bullion Boulevard at the intersection of Gold Vault Road.
The United States Department of the Treasury has maintained the Bullion Depository on the base since 1937.
This facility is operated solely by the Treasury Department, and is independent of the Army's operations there.
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Troy ounces is the measurement system for precious metals such as gold and silver.
31.1034768 grams = 1 troy ounce.
The lowest common denominator for weight systems is the “grain”.
When it is evident that an item is a precious metal, the weight is expressed simply as an “ounce” without the “troy” adjective.
Good Delivery Bar (GDB) is the standard bar for gold reserves of central banks and trading by bullion dealers.
Nominal Weight of a GDB ingot is 400 troy ounces (12.4 kg).
Actual Gold Content can vary by 80 ounces: 350 - 430 oz.
Purity of gold is required to be 99.5% or higher.
Quality Assurance of the trading system is established by recorded storage in designated vaults especially for gold bullion, hence the standardized bars of gold are Good for Delivery from one account to another in the vault.
An avoirdupois ounce is lighter than a troy ounce. One avoirdupois ounce = 28.349523125 grams. Avoirdupois ounces are used to measure common items in the Imperial Weighing system.
The mining of great silver deposits by the Spanish at Potosi in the 1500s, led to an international silver standard for money with the famous pieces of eight currency.
In 1717 the master of the Royal Mint, Sir Isaac Newton, established a new mint ratio between silver and gold that had the effect of driving silver out of circulation and putting Britain on a gold standard. The United Kingdom was the first of the great industrial powers to switch from the silver standard to a gold specie standard. Then Canada in 1853, Newfoundland in 1865, and the USA and Germany in 1873.
Purity of gold coins varies from issue to issue.
99.9% purity is common (“3-nines“).
99.999% purity is in the Canadian Gold Maple Leaf , the purest mass-produced bullion coins (“5-nines”)
100% pure bullion is not possible, as absolute purity in extracted and refined metals can only be asymptotically approached.
Johnson-Matthey was one of the first modern refiners of gold, starting in England and to this day set the world standard for refining such as used in Good Delivery Bars (GDB) for Bullion Trading.
In 1817 Percival Norton Johnson began assaying gold in London. George Matthey partnered his work in 1851. In 1852 Johnson & Matthey was appointed as the Official Assayer & Refiner to the Bank of England.
