Whether you are just considering selling your old gold for cash or just doing your homework trying to find a great gold buyer, here is some fascinating facts about gold you can find interesting:

The term comes from an old Anglo-Saxon world ‘gelo’, or yellow

The chemical symbol is Au from the Latin word ‘aurum’ which means “shining dawn”

Less than 50% of the entire world’s gold is still in the ground.

Gold never rusts.

The largest gold nugget ever found weighed 195 pounds – it was found in 1854 in California at Carson Hill above the Stanislaus River. It was valued at $43,534 in the currency of the day.

This metal is so ductile that an ounce of it can be stretched to a length of over fifty miles or beaten into a sheet to cover a hundred square feet.

A cubic foot of gold weighs approximately half a ton.

Gold has been recycled ever since it was first discovered. Some of the gold in today’s jewelry is recycled from ancient artifacts and coins! All the gold discovered in the past, eighty-five percent are still in use today.

India is the largest consumer of gold.

The methods of refining gold will destroy the environment in some extent. Gold mine will dumped a lot of cyanide into the ditch, and pour the nitrogen oxides and sulphur oxides into the air – that’s why it is extremely important to recycle gold by selling the jewellery you no longer like or need.

On the surface of the Earth, the greatest concentration of gold is in ocean, it’s estimated at around one hundred million tons. Unfortunately, so far no one has found an effective method to extract gold from the ocean.

A one-ounce gold nugget is rarer to find than a five-carat diamond.

It is used as the reflective layer on some high-end CDs.

Gold can be used in food and has the E number 175

The United States government banned private ownership of gold, which lasted 41 years; then lifted it on December 31, 1974.

The market-clearing price of gold set twice a day in London is commonly referred to as the London fixing price (AM or PM). This price, which is the international benchmark price, is set in US dollars per fine troy ounce of gold.

World holdings (source: World Gold Council 2008):

–   Jewellery 52%

–   Central banks 18%

–   Investment (bars, coins) 16%

–   Industrial 12%

–   Unaccounted 2%