What's the fuss about gold and diamonds?

Originally posted by R3KR
There is no reason they have value, its all in the minds of you know who...men

Well, they have proven to be useful, but I can see your point.
I personally have no use for diamonds.

Wanna really enjoy rocks?
Buy a Rock Tumbler. Go hiking with friends. Look for cool rocks.
Throw them in the Tumbler for a couple weeks (or whatever it is).
And wallah! Cool rocks!
Homegrown too!
Make yourself a pretty necklace for the ladies and she'll be telling the gals,
"Look, my man made me a rock necklace."
All will be impressed (or not).

Thats more like it !

useful but there are other materials that are just as good:

gold is used for electrical circuits because of its its excellent conducting,
copper is just as well suited.

Diamonds are used in cutting, carbide can also be used.

It just makes me sad when I think about all of mans horrible qualities.
Hard to accept when viewed objective.

The ahh and oohs you get when people see gold and diamonds is all
artificial, a manufactured emotion or thought from our current society.

Personally, I think blue and purple rocks are cool.
I have several but I don't know their names. One told me his name was "steve". j/k
But seriously, I have a small collection of blue and purple rocks. I have some amber too.......no dinosaur things in it though.

While we are voting on it, I agree...
I dont see anything in yellow gold. I prefer white gold over yellow...but even then.

What is nice, at least to me, is platinum...now thats a piece of material there I would like to collect.

And yea, it is like twice as expensive as gold, and most people dont think about it, but you can collect platinum coins as well as gold, just a heck of a lot more expensive. (note: I have not been following prices, so it may not exactly be double, but it has seemed to remain a good bit more expensive then gold)

Peace

dAlen

Originally posted by Doc Velocity
So, we valued metal for its durability, strength and other magical qualities long before we knew anything about processing the stuff in a furnace. Metals have their own unique qualities that thoroughly distinguish them from rock. Gold, of course, doesn't rust and doesn't tarnish like other metals, which makes it even more magical to primitive (and modern) eyes.

— Doc Velocity

[edit on 2/2/2007 by Doc Velocity]

Dang nabit doc. Now you made me go into the magical explanation of gold and diamonds.

Gold in occult circles is atributed to the sun (for obvious reasons) statues were made out of it to depict solar gods because of this. The seven penticles of the sun in the key of solomon were made out of gold.

Diamonds I am unsure of in magical circles being used much because of their color I would assume that they would be atributed to the moon. I know of a certan school of magic that would use various metals and rocks as vrilsteins. basicly containers that are properly conditioned to store magical energy.

umm newsflash people....neither gold and especially not diamonds are actually rare. people want them because we've been led to assume they are rare when they are not. The market demand was artificially created.

Originally posted by Or_Die_Trying
umm newsflash people....neither gold and especially not diamonds are actually rare. people want them because we've been led to assume they are rare when they are not. The market demand was artificially created.

Wana back it up with something? Perhaps your right. and Gold and diamonds are both very common elements in the universe. I think the day we find a planet almoast completely comprised of Gold then that commodity will loose all value whatsoever. But what of diamonds? From what I understand Diamonds are hard to create naturaly because it breaks down like this...

Dino, long buttox time ago dies :thud:

decomposes in the dirt and over time turns into oil, that oil then slowly solidifies into coal, that coal then gets packed together tightly and even more pressure is placed on it till somewhere in the mess a crystalization forms in the coal bed. This crystal starts to grow and becomes a Diamond.

Gold was valued first and foremost because of its incorruptibility - it doesn't tarnish or fade or crumble or rot or rust. It's the 'forever' metal.

Its value is not solely based on its rarity, or artificially-created market conditions - it has real value as a functionally permanent substance. There aren't many of those.

I've always fancied gold, not to wear but to own, but for some reason I've always loathed diamonds. Don't know why, they just don't appeal to me in the least.

Originally posted by WyrdeOne
Gold was valued first and foremost because of its incorruptibility - it doesn't tarnish or fade or crumble or rot or rust. It's the 'forever' metal.

Its value is not solely based on its rarity, or artificially-created market conditions - it has real value as a functionally permanent substance. There aren't many of those.

I've always fancied gold, not to wear but to own, but for some reason I've always loathed diamonds. Don't know why, they just don't appeal to me in the least.

Hmm, my mother-in-law, who loves to wear 18k gold, can tell you it indeed is very prone to not lasting. As it rubs against your wrist, wherever you wear it, it fades away...so its not a forever metal unless you dont touch it.

Now platinum...yeah man...thats something cool, and its price is above gold reflecting its coolness. lol

peace

dAlen

Hmm, my mother-in-law, who loves to wear 18k gold, can tell you it indeed is very prone to not lasting. As it rubs against your wrist, wherever you wear it, it fades away...so its not a forever metal unless you dont touch it.

Well, yeah, if you mix it with other metals it loses its most impressive property.

18k gold is only 75% gold - compared to 24k gold which is ~99% gold.

Originally posted by R3KR
I hate diamonds, I think they are they are evil, the way they are mined from the earth on the backs of children and torture. Yet people still use them to start a new life, the bigger the better. makes me sick.

Next time try breaking the pill in half... Seriously, where do you see children being tortured in the diamond-mining industry? All of the diamond mining I've seen is high-technology, high-security... They have to move thousands of tons of earth for even a few low-quality diamonds, nevermind the high-quality stuff. Massive and expensive earth-moving equipment is necessary to even make the operation profitable. I don't see how little children fit into such a technological industry. It's like saying they use child labor in offshore oil drilling. What use is a kid when it's 99% heavy technology? What do they do, grease the machinery with baby lotion?

— Doc Velocity

why all the gold haters in this thread? i really like gold.

i have a few gold coins and a good amount of silver ones.
i cant exsplain why, but they just fascinate me. if you flip a gold coin and a silver coin they make diffrent sounds. both sounds are prettier than an ordinary coin made of junk metal. i think there is alot to the precious metals that may have been known at one time that got lost over time, so now people just like gold and silver and dont really know why.

but you want to know something even stupider than atributing value to gold and diamonds?

PLACING VALUE IN PAPER! the same thing you wipe your bum with...
hahaha.

Originally posted by TheRepublic
why all the gold haters in this thread? i really like gold. i have a few gold coins and a good amount of silver ones.

There you go, another gold man. I invest in gold, and I usually carry about $300 in gold coins in my wallet, just in case I run into a situation that calls for some fast, flashy currency. "That'll be fifty dollars, please." And I produce one little gold coin the size of a dime and say, "Can you make change for THIS?" LOL

No, I wouldn't taunt people like that. But, in a real scrape, when you don't have the cash or plastic for a dire situation, Gold will still get the job done.

— Doc Velocity

I have seen everybody say diamonds are used for cutting but in reality they are to expensive to use in cutting we use them in the process but really only dress our grinding wheels.
diamonds themselves are only good for cutting things that dont have to be precise with angles and such however they do make diamond dusted wheels for grinding carbide, carbide is such a dense steel it will actualy just grind through a regular carborundium grinding wheel, however at the same time you cant drop a diamond from 3 feet on a concret floor and have it break like a carbide tool does.

i would have to say with out diamonds human species might not have evolved as far as we have considering how many important processes we use them in.

Originally posted by rocknroll
Someone mentioned that gold on our planet is a remnant from a star (I don't know if this is true - sounds pretty cool though).

It gets cooler than that - The Sun, the solar system, The Earth and everything on it, including ourselves is made up of star remnants and after our sun dies it too will become part of the next generation of stars and planets.

Incidentally, I'm quite a fan of diamonds as my record deck would sound pretty crappy without one!

i heard somewere that gold nuggets are are formed by microscopic bugs pulling gold dust into clumps when it is moved past them by underground activity. is this true

Originally posted by roswell1
i heard somewere that gold nuggets are are formed by microscopic bugs pulling gold dust into clumps when it is moved past them by underground activity. is this true

Yes, it is true...except for the part about gold nuggets being formed by microscopic bugs pulling gold dust into clumps when it is moved past them by underground activity.

Look, Gold and a few other precious metals are what you might call the slag of volcanic activity. Gold rises to the top of the magma and, when the magma pushes upward toward the Earth's surface, the molten Gold is forced into myriad fractures in the Earth's crust, and these become the so-called "veins" of Gold (BTW, if you stumble across a vein of pure Gold, remember to send me a few pounds of it for telling you all this — a bucketful will do).

Anyway, erosion will eventually expose those veins of Gold and pick them apart, nugget by nugget and flake by flake, depositing tiny Gold particles throughout the landscape in varying concentrations. Of course, the closer to the original vein of Gold you are, the more likely you are to find Gold "nuggets," (also known as native Gold).

So, in a word, the "microscopic bugs" theory is RETARDED.

— Doc Velocity

[edit on 2/4/2007 by Doc Velocity]

All elements other than hydrogen and helium are reminents of stars. Everything heavier than iron came from elements produced in a supernova.

Anyway, gold and diamonds are pretty. They both are rare, and they both have industrial uses. Why wouldn't they be valuable?

stop talking about ster remnents! god put gold on this planet!

just cheking if my avatar worked