bigjarofwasps

Beautiful......... Size Face Value (Oz. Fine Gold) Weight (g) Fineness 1.000 Gold Content (g) Gold Content (Troy Oz.) Full 1 33.9305 . 917 3 1.104 1.0000 Half 1/2 16.9653 .917 15.552 0.5000 Quarter 1/4 8.4826 .917 7.776 0.2500 Tenth 1/10 3.3931 .917 3.110 0.1000

1/10 Oz Krugerrand.......

The Quarter Oz.......

The Half Oz Krugerand.......

Krugerrand Sizes... Full Ounce.

Wreck of the Royal Charter From Wikiscuba Jump to: navigation, search The Royal Charter is a very shallow and divable wreck near Moelfre on the east coast of Anglesey. She was an early steel hulled steam clipper which was destroyed in a storm in 1859 on its way back from Australia to Liverpool with the loss of over 450 lives. She was carrying a large quantity of gold as cargo, and there was more gold in the possession of the passengers who were returning miners, and some of it was recovered at the time. For many years, even in 2005, diving teams are still attempting to excavate and recover something from the site. No successes have been reported. The wreck just off shore level with the memorial stone in a field two kilometres north of Moelfre. It lies in 4 to 6 metres of water, and can be dived from the shore after a long carry, or from a kayak.

"Royal Charter off Anglesey, one of his favourite wrecks, from which he recovered gold sovereigns and a 5oz gold nuggett." http://www.divernet.com/cgi-bin/articles.p...splay&show=

No No Dan, this thread I find very interesting & its more than welcome to stay!!!! Please post more, as & when you get them. I`m sure the other visiters will find then equally interesting. Thanks for sharing them with us Gordon

This is an interesting website. Imagine walking along the beach picking up gold sovereigns like sea shells!!!!! http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/alma...06/alm06oct.htm

Hi Hauptman, First of all many thanks for posting your thread on the forum, its always interesting to read new topics. The first coin is very interesting, and you`ll have to excuse my ignorance, but has it been voided or was this how it was designed? Gordon.

My word Peter, I had no idea. I certainly wouldn`t want to be working in those conditions either. The desert was hot enough for me!!!! I bet the miners get paid peanuts as well, especially in the bad old days, if you get my meaning. No offence to any South African memebers on the forum .

Twelve die in South African gold mine disaster 10 May 2001 Twelve mineworkers were killed in an explosion at the Beatrix gold mine on Tuesday May 8, in South Africa's worst mining disaster in two years. The explosion at the mine near Welkom, 280km southwest of Johannesburg, occurred about 850 metres underground and tore apart a development area where the men were working. Two more miners suffered serious burns, one of whom is in a critical condition in a local hospital. Six others escaped unharmed. Four thousand men were working in the mine at the time of the explosion and all have been accounted for. As news of the disaster spread, hundreds of anxious relatives telephoned the mine to find out whether their loved ones were safe. The immediate cause of the disaster is thought to have been a methane gas explosion. A broken fan had been reported the night before, which would have reduced air circulation and increased the danger of a gas build up. Four senior members of staff—two electricians, a vent officer and a production supervisor, who had been sent down the mine to investigate the breakage, were among the dead. The other eight fatalities were construction workers repairing tracks. The disaster comes 51 weeks after a similar explosion killed seven at the same mine on May 15 last year. In a statement, Gold Fields Free State divisional manager Dana Roets claimed that the lessons of last year's disaster had been learnt and the four senior members of staff were equipped with devices used to measure the presence of methane gas. He said that the deadly gas is "lighter than air and so in a haulage area methane can be quite high overhead and difficult to detect". He added that the lack of circulation caused by the broken fan could increase the danger of a methane build up. The government has announced that there will be an investigation into the explosion. One question that must be addressed is why work at the mine had not been stopped, at least in the vicinity of the broken fan, when the danger of a build up of methane was known. With 4,000 miners underground at the time, the disaster could have been far greater. South Africa's deep-level gold mines are among the most dangerous work environments in the world. The death toll this century is reported as anything from 69,000 to 100,000, with more than one million workers injured in South African gold mines. The gold is reached by blasting, which destabilizes the overhead roofs and creates a constant danger of rock falls. Methane gas explosions and fire are also serious hazards, causing many deaths. In the industry's last major accident in July 1999, a methane gas explosion at a mine in the gold belt southwest of Johannesburg killed 19 miners. The country's worst mining disaster was in 1986, when 177 workers were killed as a result of a polyurethane fire at a mine east of Johannesburg. A total of 313 miners were killed in 1999, 372 in 1998 and 424 in 1997. At the time of the accident in July 1999, a BBC report gave some idea of conditions underground: "All of South Africa's significant gold deposits are very deep underground, miles down, at depths that ordinary human beings find hard to comprehend. "The shafts are so deep that the rock is hot to the touch. The devil's workplace. And like the devil's workplace, working at these depths is very dangerous. Newspaper reports talk of mine cave-ins and shaft collapses. The real thing is far nastier, where the pressure builds up in deep level rock until the whole tunnel explodes inwards, footwall, hangingwall, sidewall, the lot, crushing completely anything in its way." The end of the apartheid regime has brought the introduction of better safety regulations but the unions complain that there are still not enough inspectors to enforce them, and that some mine managers still put output before safety. Even though there has been some improvement in the industry's safety record since 1994, over the past three years the death rate has averaged more than one miner killed everyday in South Africa's gold mines. The South African gold industry has to compete on the world markets with modern, open cast gold production in North America and Australia. Here miners cut the tops off low-grade mountain deposits, which are then crushed, soaked in cyanide and the precious metal extracted from the liquor. This low cost, low labour production threatens the very existence of the South African gold industry and increases pressure to maximise production at all costs, resulting in disasters like the one at the Beatrix mine this week.

17 Die in Blast in South African Gold Mine 30 July 1999 At least 17 miners were killed late Thursday in an explosion in a gold mine near Johannesburg, the mine owners reported. Two workers are still missing in the mine, the Mponeng, near Carletonville, about nine miles southwest of Johannesburg. Twenty miners were rescued. This is the worst mining disaster for the mine's owner, the Anglogold group, since 1995, when 104 people were killed when an elevator plummeted in a mine near Klerksdorp. Anglogold, the world's biggest gold producer, said the explosion was apparently caused by methane. South Africa's mines are among the world's deepest and accidents are frequent. The authorities said at a mine safety meeting in November that nearly 890 miners were killed in South Africa's mines in the last two years.

Gold mine accident crushes 100 - Cape Town, South Africa 12th May 1995 CAPE TOWN, South Africa - Thirty hours after a 12-ton underground locomotive and an elevator cage filled with miners crashed to the bottom of the Vaal Reefs No. 2 shaft at Orkney in the Orange Free State, recovery teams brought up the first few bodies of what may be possibly more than 100 dead. Working in shifts in Stygian darkness 7,500 feet below the surface, the teams were still attempting to disentangle the mass of twisted metal and piles of concrete shaft lining and rock at the base of the shaft. The only confirmation reaching the surface was that there were no survivors. How the locomotive - used on the 56 level, 1,700 meters down - plunged into the shaft is not known. It appears to have tipped into the shaft as the cage containing night-shift miners was on its way up from the lower levels. The locomotive crashed into the elevator cage 500 meters from the bottom of the shaft, snapping the cable and sending the cage plummeting down. Energy and Mineral Affairs Minister Pik Botha said it appeared that human error caused the accident because the locomotive went through a safety barrier -and fell into the shaft. "The locomotive could not have moved as it did had it been properly controlled," Botha said in a statement. "The driver is alive so he must have either jumped out of the locomotive or in any event was not in it." Some 400 other workers were brought safely to the surface, and rescuers were using a parallel shaft to reach the wreckage, mine officials said. After recovery teams brought up the first four mangled bodies, medic Garth Ellis, who was part of the first rescue squads, said, "It's a heap of mangled steel. It's a gruesome sight." "Pieces of flesh were scattered all over ... a two-floor mining carriage was crushed into a one-floor tin box," said James Motlasti, president of the National Union of Mineworkers. The union has been invited to take part in a probe of the accident. Damage to the shaft, one of 10 at the mine. is still to be assessed. The No. 2 shaft produced 7,687 kilograms of gold last year, 12 percent of the output of Vaal Reefs Exploration & Mining Co. Ltd. The mine is located 112 miles southwest of Johannesburg. The disaster was the second tragedy to strike the mine in recent weeks. Last month, an inter-communal clash between Xhosa-speaking and Sotho-speaking miners left 12 dead and 56 injured. Labor leaders called for an independent investigation and review of safety standards. Sam Shilowa, head of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, told a Johannesburg radio station that South African mines had the highest number of deaths in the world. South Africa is the world's leading gold producer and has some of the deepest mines. Accidents occur frequently. Botha said he would support a union call for an independent probe. "We cannot, in a tragedy of this nature, quibble about procedural matters," said Botha, whose ministry will carry out an investigation. The nation's worst mining disaster occurred in 1960, when 437 workers were killed when trapped in a coal mine south of Johannesburg. The worst gold mining disaster occurred in 1909, when 152 miners died in a flooded mine. A report on mine safety by a government-appointed panel was expected next week. This accident was likely to spur calls for stronger safety measures.

I find it really interesting. I suppose it could be down to monetary & non monetary gold, some of it must sit in vaults never to be touched whilst some of it gets made into coins, sold on etc,etc. Like you say I`ve no idea how you`d go about finding out & if they`d tell anyway.

Cheers P thats really interesting. Hope the dental visit wasn`t to !!! But I was particuarly interested in the world gold reserves two story house, same gold used over and over again fact, which leads me onto this, again a but what do you think of this? "I`m very curious to see if anyone can shine any light on this for me. Basically what I`d like to know is, whether Krugerrands are minted from recently refined gold, or from gold that has been in vaults for years & years? Is there anyway of knowing? Or is it just the earlier mintages that might fall into this catagary?"

A bit of fun.......... Lethal Weapon 2.......... As the movie begins, Riggs and Murtaugh are involved in a car chase through the streets of Los Angeles. What was supposed to be a routine drug bust has turned into a huge, sprawling chase and gunfight. When the car finally crashes into a store, the driver has vanished before the police can arrest him, although they find his car was filled with illegal South African Krugerrands. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethal_Weapon_2

Slightly off topic, but interesting none the less, I read the book The Shooting Gallery by Gaz Hunter recently........ The Shooting Gallery by Gaz Hunter Chapter 15- (Afghanistan sometime during the 1980`s), the author is employed by a company, in the UK to escort some Stinger missiles & one million dollars in Krugerrands into Afghanistan. The Krugerrands were intended for the Afgan fighters to buy weapons from China or Iran, in order to fight the Russians. The coins were placed in six thick waterproof cotton canvas bags, each too heavy for a man on his own to lift. The gold & missiles were placed onto mules and taken high up into the Afgan mountains to the Mujahideen. Its a good book, and well worth a read. Not your usual SAS stuff.

Hi Johnsy, thanks for your reply. Thought this might be of interest? Carat Fineness, % Gold content, % Comments 24 999 99.9 Three nines 24 990 99.0 Two nines, Minimum allowed 22 916 91.6 Indian subcontinent 21 875 87.5 Arabic countries (19.2) 800 80.0 Standard in Portugal 18 750 75.0 Standard caratage 14.8 620 62.0 Dental Gold Minimum 14 585 58.5 583/58.3% in USA 10 417 41.7 Minimum in USA 9 375 37.5 U.K. standard 8 333 33.3 Minimum Germany I think that if the gold was refined and all the other metals taken out, it would then become pure gold, but as to how much dental gold for how much pure gold you`d get by doing this I have no idea, but I imagine that it`d be a lot. I read somewhere that for every 5 tons of gold ore that is mined in South Africa they get something crazy like 5 gramms of pure gold!!!! Gordon.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5121552.stm The total number of UK troops killed while on operations in Afghanistan since 2001 has risen to 41 after the death of a Royal Marine in Lashkar Gah in Helmand Province on 19 October.

Four British servicemen were killed following an attack on a boat patrol in southern Iraq on 12 November. They were named as: Warrant Officer Lee Hopkins, 35, of the Royal Corps of Signals; Staff Sergeant Sharron Elliott, 34, of the Intelligence Corps; Corporal Ben Nowak, 27, of 45 Commando Royal Marines; and Marine Jason Hylton, 33, of 539 Assault Squadron Royal Marines. A further three suffered serious injuries in the attack on the Shatt al-Arab waterway in Basra. The total number of UK troops killed in operations in Iraq has risen to 125 after four soldiers were killed in Basra City on Sunday 12 November, 2006.

KETTLE-KRUGERRANDS DENVER (AP) - The holiday season is golden for the Salvation Army in Denver. Charity spokeswoman Karen Herdman says an anonymous donor has dropped four gold coins into a collection kettle in front of an area supermarket. The South African Krugerrands are worth about $1,000 each. It's the fourth straight year someone has made the solid gold donation. Herdman says the Salvation Army doesn't know the identity of the donor. But she says the anonymous benefactor always calls to make sure the gold coins have been found.

Iraq death soldier named by MoD Kingsman Hancock came under fire while on sentry duty A British soldier who died after an attack on a base in southern Iraq has been named by the Ministry of Defence. Kingsman Jamie Hancock, of the 2nd Battalion Duke of Lancaster's Regiment, came under small arms fire on Monday while on sentry duty in Basra City. The 19-year-old, who lived near Wigan Lancashire, with his soldier brother, was deployed to Iraq on 21 October. The number of British troops killed in operations in Iraq is now 121. Of these, 91 died after hostile action. On joining the army, Kingsman Hancock served as a rifleman involved in training to prepare other units for operations in Iraq. He volunteered for a six-month tour of the country as part of Catterick-based 19 Light Brigade, later amalgamated into The Duke of Lancaster's Regiment. 'Fearless spirit' Kingsman Hancock's company commander, Major Chris Job, described him as an "energetic and enthusiastic individual who lived for the Army and had a very promising career ahead of him". "His enthusiasm was boundless and the fearless spirit with which he lived was amply demonstrated by his decision to volunteer for this Iraq tour," he said. "He was a magnet for his peers, who were drawn by his infectious sense of fun and all-embracing nature." In a statement, Kingsman Hancock's family said: "We are deeply shocked at the loss of our much-loved son. "We are and always will be very proud of him and all that he achieved." The MoD said there were no other casualties after the incident, which took place around 1200 local time at the Old State Building, a coalition forces base in central Basra City. Defence Secretary Des Browne said he was "deeply saddened" by the death. Mr Browne said: "His family, friends and comrades as ever have my thoughts and prayers at this difficult time. "Our brave forces are striving to build a better future for the people of Iraq and this is a stark reminder to us all of the dangers they face there."

Maybe, maybe, & the Aliens demanded to be paid in fake Krugerrands minted for Nazi gold, which is where the whole story started.

Hi Kev , A fellow sceptic, thats nice to see!!!! However, I do love this sort of thing. I suppose the concept could be real, but the facts as given in this article are full of holes I agree. The Krugerrand would certianly be an easy coin to copy, especially, if you were using gold, and the reason for doing this wasn`t in fact to make fake coins, but to launder the gold you already had. I suppose no one would be any the wiser, unless you used all the same year, and all of a sudden the martket was flooded with more 1967 coins that were made if you get my train of thought. If you read one of my other treads, you`ll see that after the war, the Allies found hordes of gold sovereigns, in various banks in Spain & Portugal, the old Swiss Banks, certainly delivered gold to these countries, so I suppose the concept could be real. But lets just say for the sake or arguement, this in fact turns out to be the trueth, and lets just say there was a way to tell the difference between an South African Krugerrand & a Nazi one, which one would be more valuable? Gordon.