Learn Gold Coins

The his­tory of gold coins is some­what obscure and com­plex. Var­i­ous his­tor­i­cal sources pin­point to var­i­ous dates and sites as being the first place and time gold was dis­cov­ered. This leads to the con­clu­sion that the first sight­ing and use of gold can­not be pin­pointed with con­crete arche­o­log­i­cal evi­dence. How­ever there are a num­ber of recorded proofs that gold has been in use and had excited man since way back.

For exam­ple, fos­sil study experts found traces of gold in Span­ish caves dated back to the Pale­olithic Man of about 40,000 B.C. One other his­tor­i­cal source claims gold was dis­cov­ered around 6000 circa B.C. while another reports that the Pharaohs of Egypt and their tem­ple priests used gold for adorn­ment as far back as circa 3000 B.C. Egypt.

Egypt was not how­ever the first reported civ­i­liza­tion to use gold as a means of exchange. That honor was claimed by the King­dom of Lydia in west­ern Turkey around 700 B.C. The first form of gold money coins were pro­duced by Lydian mer­chants. The coins were stamp lumps known as elec­trum and were made up of 27% sliver and 63% gold.

Arche­o­log­i­cal evi­dence indi­cates that the exten­sive use of gold began in the Mid­dle East. The ear­li­est pieces of gold used as jew­elry were found in the exca­vated tombs of the Egypt­ian Queen Zer and Queen Pu-abi of Ur Sume­ria. The tomb of Tutankhamen of Egypt of the sec­ond mil­len­nium BC proved to con­tain the largest dis­cov­ered col­lec­tion of gold and jew­elry and included a gold coffin.

By the time of the Roman Empire, Rome was filled with many gold arti­sans and a wide vari­ety of gold jew­elry was used. Gold was later also used in fur­ni­ture and some house­hold items in the homes of the rich in Rome. By the third cen­tury AD, gold neck­laces con­tain­ing the image of the Roman emperor were pop­u­lar among the citizens.

Before the com­ing of the Span­ish, Indian gold­smith had already mas­tered many gold pro­cess­ing tech­niques such as gran­u­la­tion, ham­mer­ing, press­ing, fil­i­gree, inlay and lost-wax meth­ods. The largest gold deposits of those times were located in the Andes and Colum­bia. The early United States fron­tier days saw the dis­cov­ery of large deposits of gold in a num­ber of loca­tions and led to what is referred to as the gold rushes.

Occur­ring in many west­ern states, the gold rush saw many men risk­ing life and scram­bling to get a share of the pre­cious golden yel­low won­der. One of the most famous rushes in the United States hap­pened in 1848 at Stutter’s Mill, Cal­i­for­nia. Gold rushes also occurred in Aus­tralia, South Africa and Canada in 1851, 1884 and 1897 respectively.

The use of gold as a mon­e­tary stan­dard was later adopted to sta­bi­lize the global econ­omy. The gold stan­dard stip­u­lated that a coun­try could not issue cur­rency above the amount of gold it had it its reserves. In 1972, the U.S. Con­gress adopted a new cur­rency and adopted a bimetal­lic stan­dard using gold and silver. In 1821, Great Britain adopted the gold stan­dard and was fol­lowed by the rest of Europe dur­ing the 1870s.

The gold stan­dard was later dropped by other coun­tries at the end of the First World War and most coun­tries began to keep cur­rency as reserves instead of gold. US how­ever con­tin­ued to honor the gold stan­dard until the great depres­sion when gold was replaced by the US dol­lar in inter­na­tional trade.

In 1986, the Amer­i­can eagle pro­gram was ini­ti­ated allow­ing the sale of gold and sil­ver bul­lion coins. While the exact his­tory of gold remains debat­able, no one can argue that the golden yel­low won­der has excited and plea­sured man for cen­turies and would con­tinue to do — the his­tory of gold coins just backs this up.