Electrum, The Forgotten Precious Metal.

For VB3347, do you recommend the purchase of the 2002 Gibraltar electrum coin you own? I'm trying to decide between this and a 1/2 oz gold coin. I'm wondering which would be easier to sell and/or of more value 20-30 yrs down the road.

My Two Cents: try to find electrum when it's still in its matrix or rough original unrefined form. If you make a coin from electrum it can be replicated by mixing the ratio/purity of silver to gold and press it into a coin. That or get a Roman coin that is originally made of electrum, an endevour I must accomplish before I get too old, heh. I imagine the details come out very nicely on a coin of this purity.

I think one of the private bullion mints ought to do this.

I like this idea better than fractional coins. You would get bigger coins that way.

Say you put in 1/20th a troy ounce of gold in each electrum coin. You alloy that with some standard amount of silver. Say you go with 1/4 troy ounce of silver.

The coin reverse has both metal contents listed.

Metal content (using $1200 and $16 for simplicity) is $60 of gold and $4 of silver. $64 melt. Say you need to sell retail at cost plus 30% and you are at basically $85 retail.

Fill a tube of 20 and you have one ounce of gold and five ounces of silver.

Probably would want to play with the gold to silver ratio in the alloy to show enough gold color for marketing purposes.

I would issue them as ancient electrum replica coins.

This is the reason I'm not looking at the silver-PGM alloys for wear-resistant silver coins. 1/2% of a metal that sells for 100X the price means a premium nobody is going to pay for.

It's a question of semantics really - electrum is just gold as far as I am concerned.

Gold as it is generally referred to is always a mixture of metals with the exception of pure bars and coins. In order to manufacture anything from it there must be alloys. As soon as it is soldered for instance the carat must be below 24ct (pure) since solder needs a lower melting temperature.

Pure gold is crumbly too, and too soft for good jewellery... so generally it is excepted 18ct gives a good balance of colour/purity/longevity. But 14ct (14 out of 24 parts of gold) is common in the states, 10ct in Germany and 9ct in England....it is what we are used to seeing being worn as necklaces or bracelets. If these things are not pure it is usually silver and copper that are the diluting materials.

What difference if the mix occurred naturally or was melted together by a craftsman? It still amounts to the same thing I think so its all just a matter of words. A rose by any other name....

Anyway I own one Electrum coin...

We can trust the purity marks over here... Great Britain is no longer great but we do still have the premier hallmarking regulations in the world. Nothing can be described as silver or gold with out it being assayed and stamped with a measure of fineness. The system is reliable and inexpensive.

White gold is commonly rhodium plated because of the dullness you mention...and the use of nickel has largely been withdrawn from the mix because of the amount of people who suffer allergic reactions to it.

In Canada the purity markings are never controlled and there's no assay office where items get sent. Anyone can put whatever they want and it'll never get noticed. It's one of those laws that only honest people follow and it's open to abuse because crooks don't obey the law. It goes like this: you can put a purity mark on the item but it must be accompanied by a trademark so that it can be "traced" to you. Kind of like the way serial numbers on certain items will track down the previous owners.....until they get grinded off by the disobedient crook.

There is a type of ombudsman that goes around testing random pieces, but I'm not so sure how it works. I've seen many discrepancies and it's sort of tolerated here, which makes me mad, because this industry is not the most loved. I have stories but they're not for the public. PM me if you're interested, Dave.