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WORLDWIDE GOLD SUPPLY
by amarks
May 25, 2004, updated 9:50PM
(Special thanks to Arlet Ottens for his assistance with getting my numbers more accurate.)

Office Building Holding All Worldwide
Above Ground Gold as of year-end 2004

Let's assume you own a 3,048 sq ft home. We'll add on seven floors to it and you can hold all the above ground gold in the world.

Each gridline is one floor:

  1. Central bank vaults contain the first 1.49 floors of physical gold.

  2. Central bank leased gold (using Veneroso more conservative, not aggressive numbers) comprises the next .97 stories of our office building. Likely this gold has been sold into the market and now is largely in other categories (e.g. Monetary Jewelry/Private Bar & Coin).

  3. Private bar and coin comprises .73 floors.

  4. Monetary Jewelry is gold primarily in India and other third world countries in which people hold their wealth around their necks, fingers, and arms rather than in a bank account and is the largest category comprising 2.5 stories.

  5. Fashion Jewelry is gold that has a higher labor content and/or contains other precious stones. This is non-monetary gold since it is doubtful this gold will ever be melted down to sell for scrap even at $1,000 POG and comprises 1.53 floors.

  6. Industrial and Dental comprise .81 stories.

  7. 2004 Gold Production is .173 of a floor. We are currently adding one new story every 5.8 years to our office building (82 Million Ounces annual production).


Calculations & Sources:

About that Gold House...
it's grown to a 3,048 sq ft. building 12 stories high... much larger than what I had been led to believe from others posts (e.g. Jeff Little) a while back. My math could be wrong. Someone please correct if you see an error, but here goes my calcs:

  1. a 400 oz bar has dimensions:
    approximate dimensions are 7 x 3-5/8 x 1-3/4 inches
    http://www.ustreas.gov/education/fact-sheets/currency/fort-knox.html

  2. I want to stack them square, so instead of 7" x  3.625" = 25.38 sq inches, my gold bars are 7.124" x 3.562" = 25.38 sq inches so that I can stack them 1 across and 2 lengthwise to form a 10.686" x 7.124" rectangle, which contains 3 gold bars of 400 troy ounces each.

  3. To get to the 3,048 sq ft [square shape] house, I use 93 x 62 of these rectangle units to obtain  662.52" length and 662.52" width, which equals 438,948 sq inches, which equals 3,048 sq feet.
    http://www.metric-conversions.org/area/square-inches-to-square-feet.htm

  4. Thus, the first layer of gold bars will be 62 x 93 x 3 bars x 400 oz = 6,919,200 troy ounces. This layer would be 1.75" high (see dimensions in 1. above).

  5. Using a combination of Gold Institute, GFMS and James Turk's calculations for world gold supply, I believe the above ground supply of gold is 3.8 Billion ounces (some gold has been consumed and/or lost, which I estimate at about 8% since the beginning of time).

    http://www.goldinstitute.org/supply/prodworld.html

    http://www.fgmr.com/gold.htm
    http://www.gold.org/discover/knowledge/faqs/index.html

  6. 3.80B ounces ( + .0082B 2004 production) divided by 6,919,200 ounces @ 1.75" = 561 layers of gold at 1.75" each.

  7. 561 layers x 1.75" = 81.82 feet height

  8. Assuming 10 foot high ceilings, gives you slightly over eight floors.


Other graphs from James Turk:

I believe this is materially accurate.  I  Would appreciate any peer review that would make it more accurate.

CONTACT INFORMATION
amarks
Dallas, Texas USA
Email

 

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