cache reality

[cm5838]

I was curious, i been reading a lot on lost treasures and stuff, there are too many tales of chests or steamer trunks buried somewhere just over flowing with gold, and stories of a robber carrying off and burrying "hundreds" of bars of gold. Knowing how heavy gold REALLY is, how common is true tales of 25,000lbs chests of gold? or have these stories just been over exxagerated? Even seen a documentary on buried loot from a bank robbery where they talked about one guy loading a single horse with 100 of the large gold bars, these bars are like 70lbs right, and the total weight would be 7000lbs, see what i mean.
Charles

[mattjd]

A lot of times bank robbers would hide the big load in a safe place as soon as possible to wait till the heat dies down before they recover it again, but alot of times they would get caught by the pope's and would never get a chance to recover it and so that's how different stories of "tons of gold stashed somewere in the hills" come from I guess.

HH Matt

[Gold Digger]

Strong horses maybe?

[jeff of pa]

My guess alot of times, the Robbery Netted Maby $100,00 Worth of Gold. In their Time.

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Then When the Price of Gold Has gone way up, & the Story Is told Again, it Becomes $2000,00 Worth Of Gold, NOT pointing Out What it Originally was.

THEN as Time Passes The Value is $25,000.00 , And the Store Is Told Saying $25,000.00 Worth of Gold.

? ?Now Someone NOT realizing This, Figures Out How much $25,000,00 Worth Of Gold Is in Weight Then, Figures Out HOW much, That Much Gold Would Be worth Today, And Before You Know it.

THE ROBBERY is said to Have Netted $250,000.00 Worth Of Gold, and Some are Thinking HOW? can you Carry 50,000 Lbs of gold.

=================

I believe this is Some of the Reasons, you Hear stories that Part of the Treasure Was Found, But The Rest Is still there somewhere.

THIS is Part of The Reason RESEARCH is VERY important.

[cm5838]

that makes sense. it seemed a lot of the people telling these stories don't realize how heavy gold is. you see it in movies a lot too, like ghost ship for example, where two men picked up a crate with about 10 of these 70 lb bars of gold, would have to be strong men.

[ZumbroKid]

Sometimes the value was padded back then for insurance purposes. Also just like a rumor, stories tend to grow each time they are told. That is the reason reseachers try to gather as much info as possible and sift it down for the facts.

[warsawdaddy]

Gold bars were not always large.Some gold bars were only about 4"x3/8".It depended on who they were for and where they were produced.Some were very roughly and crudely formed.Different standards for different folks.

[MiddenMonster]

Knowing how heavy gold REALLY is, how common is true tales of 25,000lbs chests of gold? or have these stories just been over exxagerated?

I forget if I read it here or somewhere else, but it was just a couple of weeks ago I read that a cube of gold slightly over 14"x14"x14" weighs 1 ton. That means that the standard full-size pickup truck, even the 3/4 ton F-250s and Ram/Chevy 2500s wouldn't be able to safely carry it in the bed. Slice that cube up into bars of various sized to see how the count calculates out. Then figure out how many average horses it would take to carry it, and after that, how far they could travel without rest. By my count, you could slice the cube into 14 slabs, 1" thick. Then slice each of those slabs into 8 bars 7"x3.5"x1". By my count that's approximately 112 bars that weigh 166.6 lbs. each. Even a square measuring 3.5"x3.5"x1" will weigh 83.3 lbs. No wonder all those gold chains worn by rappers are hollow!

[MalteseFalcon]

Here: http://www.gold.org/discover/knowledge/faqs/

Scroll to the very bottom:

13. How big is a tonne of gold?
Gold is traditionally weighed in Troy Ounces (31.1035 grammes). With the density of gold at 19.32 g/cm3, a troy ounce of gold would have a volume of 1.64 cm3. A tonne of gold would therefore have a volume of 51, 760 cm3, which would be equivalent to a cube of side 37.27cm (Approx. 1' 3'').

That is astonishing....a cube of 15" weighing one ton....

[Kentucky Kache]

If somebody will give me a cube of gold, I'll slice it up and tell you how hard it is to carry. I promise.

[gord]

And a few years ago somebody calculated that all the gold mined in the world to that time would fit into a cube that measured only 10m. (33ft.) to a side.
Gord

[cm5838]

well, i'm doing my part to expand that cube, so far i may have found enough to coat one side of it with gold leaf