Mint Gold, Mannix and Myth vs. Reality

[MiddenMonster]

I was watching an old episode of Mannix yesterday. Long story short, pilot thieves faked a cargo plane crash to steal a shipment of gold that was being moved from the San Francisco mint to Fort Knox. Turns out the gold was hidden in an old abandoned gold mine by one of the thieves, who would melt some down and sell it every now and then. When Mannix asked why, the mint employee (who naturally turned out to have been in on the heist from the beginning) told him that mint gold was "too pure" to sell on the market. The gold was hidden in the mine and being melted down there because naturally occurring impurities were present and could be easily added to the mix to make it safe to sell. I'd never heard about mint gold being too pure for sale. Is this true?

BTW, the gold stolen in the heist weighed just under 1500lbs. and was worth $500K. So anyone wanting to go all mathlete can now have some fun calculating the then and now values...

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Agony and Death on a Gold Rush Steamer: The Disastrous Sinking of the Side-Wheeler Yankee Blade - Grab it through Amazon!

[arizau]

The gold ingots were probably "5 nines purity" which is 99.999% pure and is as pure as gold can be refined leading to suspicions as to where it came from. Gold dore (probably what he tried to emulate by adding impurities) is obtained by melting down gold from placer deposits and mined ore which is much less pure (somewhere north of 88%) and contains measurable amounts of several other elements usually including percentages of copper and silver and fractions of a percent of several other elements.

 

[Clay Diggins]

BTW, the gold stolen in the heist weighed just under 1500lbs. and was worth $500K. So anyone wanting to go all mathlete can now have some fun calculating the then and now values...

By my calculations 1500 pounds of gold in any era would equal exactly 1500 pounds of gold today.

Gold doesn't evaporate, rot or burn. That's why even after more than 3,000 years gold is still the standard by which other things are valued. Any other calculation just shows how much paper debt notes have inflated in comparison to gold.

Heavy Pans

 

[MiddenMonster]

The gold ingots were probably "5 nines purity" which is 999.99 pure and is as pure as gold can be refined leading to suspicions as to where it came from. Gold dore (probably what he tried to emulate by adding impurities) is obtained by melting down gold from placer deposits and mined ore which is much less pure (somewhere north of 88%) and contains measurable amounts of several other elements usually including percentages of copper and silver and fractions of a percent of several other elements.

That makes sense. Wouldn't want to raise suspicion. To what purity can the average person smelt gold, and at what point in history was the government able to attain "5 nines" purity?

By my calculations 1500 pounds of gold in any era would equal exactly 1500 pounds of gold today.

Gold doesn't evaporate, rot or burn. That's why even after more than 3,000 years gold is still the standard by which other things are valued. Any other calculation just shows how much paper debt notes have inflated in comparison to gold.

Hmmm...let's try a comparison of those values. By my calculations, the 1500lbs. of gold in the episode being worth $500K works out to $333.33/lb. Divide that by 12 Troy ounces and that works out to $27.78/oz. By comparison, gold closed just over $1,400/oz. several days ago. So for easier calculation let's go with $1400/oz. 1500lbs of gold multiplied by 12 Troy ounces comes to 18,000 oz. Multiply that by $1,400/oz and you get a value of $25,200,000. So the question is, could you live better on $500K in 1970, or $25 million dollars today?

 

[arizau]

Found this for you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wohlwill_process. Also this for smelting. https://www.911metallurgist.com/blog/gold-smelting-refining-process.

 

[Clay Diggins]

Hmmm...let's try a comparison of those values. By my calculations, the 1500lbs. of gold in the episode being worth $500K works out to $333.33/lb. Divide that by 12 Troy ounces and that works out to $27.78/oz. By comparison, gold closed just over $1,400/oz. several days ago. So for easier calculation let's go with $1400/oz. 1500lbs of gold multiplied by 12 Troy ounces comes to 18,000 oz. Multiply that by $1,400/oz and you get a value of $25,200,000. So the question is, could you live better on $500K in 1970, or $25 million dollars today?

Sounds like TV math MM.

The TV show Mannix ran from 1967 until 1975.

In 1967 the price of gold was $35.50 an ounce.
In 1970 the price of gold was $38.90 an ounce.
In 1975 the price of gold was $139.29 an ounce.

At no time since 1933 has the price of gold been below $32.32 an ounce.

Mannix can't do math. There's your Myth vs Reality.

Heavy Pans

 

[Clay Diggins]

1500 pounds of gold would be a cube 15 inches square.

Heavy Cube