1/15/2025 Report - Mystery Items: Can You identify Them? Silver and Gold Prices and Ratios. From King Menes To Modern Times.

 

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.

Mystery Item.

What are the items shown above?  Do you know?

How about the one below?

Mystery Item 2

My wife taught Sunday School to little kids.  They loved the mystery box.  

The mystery box held an object having to do with the lesson.  The kids would put there hand in the box and feel the object and try to guess what the object was.   They always enjoyed it.

Funny thing is, I saw a TV program with a couple Miami Dolphin football players, and they did the same thing.  I can't remember what the obect i9n the box was, but they seemed to enjoy trying to guess the identity of the object too.  I don't remember what the object was,   All I remember was the big football players doing the mystery box just like the six-year-olds.

And I also enjoy, as do some of my readers, trying to figure out what the mystery finds are.  I guess it is a natural and useful function for human success.  People need to be able to identify objects, as well as patters and other things.  One of the first accomplishments, of a newborn is recognizing a mother's face.  

Anyhow, above are two mystery items.  The link below will take you to a site that tells you what those two obejcts and several others, are.  Take a look.

16 Weird Items Identified By People On The Internet

Thanks to DJ for sending that link.

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The spot price of gold is currently around $2692 and the spot price of silver is around $30 per ounce.  Both are down from November highs.

Below are the one-year charts for each.

That is in terms of US dollars of course.

Below are percentage gains or losses for various historical periods for both silver and gold.

You can see that over a twenty year period, gold increased 529% while silver increased about 350%.

In those terms, gold did quite a bit better over the last twenty years.

The gold to silver ration is about 88:1 at the present, but that hasn't always been the relationship.  Governments have attempted to set the relative values at different times in the past.

Here is a chart showing the gold to silver ratio, which, as you can see has changed significantly over the years.

For a clearer gold to silver ratio chart see Gold to Silver Ratio - 100 Year Historical Chart | MacroTrends

Instead of thinking in terms of dollars you can think about how much silver would it take to buy an ounce of gold.  At present, it would take about 88 ounces of silver to buy an ounce of gold.

But sometimes it would take more or less silver to buy an ounce of gold.  That is something you might consider if you are thinking about buying or selling either gold or silver.  You might want to sell silver to buy gold when silver is more valuable relative to gold.

Too bad most dealers will take a good percentage on both ends of the transaction, but you might be able to work a swap.

Here are some interesting facts.

From a mining perspective, annual silver production averages around 800 million ounces per year, and gold production a little over 100 million ounces. That would give a gold-silver ratio of around 8-1.

The earliest recorded gold-silver ratio was by King Menes of Ancient Egypt when he set the ratio at 2.5-1.

Rome set a gold-silver ratio of 8-1 in the early years of the empire in 210 BCE. As gold and silver flowed into Rome through its conquests, the ratio fluctuated, rising as high as 12-1. Julius Caesar established a gold-silver ratio of 11.5-1 and Augustus bumped it up to 11.75-1.

Around the ancient world, the gold-silver ratio ranged between 6-1 and 12-1 with Asian and Middle Eastern empires valuing silver slightly more, thus setting slightly narrower ratios.

The U.S. Congress fixed a gold-silver ratio of 15-1 in its 1792 coinage act. This compared to a 15.5-1 ratio set by France in 1803.

A bi-metallic monetary system proved to be unwieldy and European countries began to demonetize silver in the mid-19th century... by World War II, the gold-silver ratio had spread to as much as 40-1...

In the modern era, the gold-silver ratio has averaged between 40-1 and 60-1. 

Since the U.S. completely abandoned the gold standard in 1972, there appears to be some correlation between the gold-silver ratio and central bank money creation. The spread tends to drop when the Fed turns up the printing press and spreads when the central bank attempts to tighten monetary policy...

Here is the link for the rest of that article.

What Is the Gold-Silver Ratio? Why Should We Pay Attention to It?

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Since I've been metal detecting, I've seen both gold and silver got significantly higher and lower prices,  There was also the time the Hunt brothers cornered a large part of the silver market and drove silver prices higher.

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We had north winds again today.  The surf will be increasing Wednesday.

Source: Surfguru.com.

Good hunting,

Treqasureguide@comcast.net