What are the Best Precious Metals to Invest In?
There are many precious metals that you can invest in and many of them will bring you a good return for your money. The most well-known metal to invest in is gold, followed by silver and then platinum, and then palladium. You can buy all these metals in different forms such as bars, coins, rounds, and even jewelry. Here are some of the metals that you can invest in and have some good returns.
Gold
Gold is the most well-known of all the precious metals, and for good reason, it has been around the longest. Gold has been around for many centuries, being used as currency for the first time in around 600 BCE, but even before that, as far back as 2600 BCE, the ancient Mesopotamians were using gold to make jewelry.
Around the 1220’s BCE, gold was used to create the tomb of the great King Tutankhamen. After that gold was used as currency as early as 600 BCE, then around 564 BCE the Lydian King Croesus figured out to refine the gold even better starting the first-ever gold currency that was common around the world.
In about the 1300s the first system for telling the quality of gold was founded in London. The United Kingdom established the original gold standard in 1717. At that time gold was 77 shillings for an ounce of gold. The gold standard continued in the United States until 1971 when President Richard Nixon ended it, turning instead to the fiat system in which currency is measured against currency around the world.
Gold continues to be a major investment for many people around the world. If you would like to invest in gold, you need to contact BGASC, and they can help you. Investing in gold will be a decision that is right for you and your investment portfolio.
Silver
Silver is used for many reasons, maybe even more than gold, but it still is not as popular as gold. Gold has more allure than silver just because of the nature of gold. Pure silver is the best at conducting heat and electricity and is also the best at reflecting light – which is why silver was originally used for making mirrors.
To make jewelry and silverware, pure silver is too soft, so people use a mixture of silver and copper to make sterling silver. Some electronics and batteries also use silver to make them more efficient. Silver is also used for other things, such as silver bars, coins, and other items that are used for investing.
Silver was first found in around 3000 BCE in Turkey and Greece. The ancient people in these two places figured out how to refine silver by heating silver ore and then blowing air over it. This process is called cupellation and has been used in various ways since the process was founded.
Silver really became popular when the Europeans landed in the Americas in the late 1400s. The Spanish conquerors landed in South America, they found huge stores of silver. Nearly all the silver produced from the 1500s to the 1800s came from South America and Mexico.
Silver was made really popular in the early days of photography since silver nitrate was used on the photographic plates that were used in the big cameras of the day. Even today, silver is an important part of modern photography since there is still a lot of silver used in the photographic process. To learn more about this process, you need to check out this site: https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/silver-and-sunlight. This site will help you to know about early photography.
The first big silver strike that happened in the United States happened in Nevada in 1857. Although the brothers who found the silver died before they could profit from it, that mine made over three hundred million dollars between the time it was discovered until 1992. If you want to learn more about silver, you need to check out this website. They can help you to discover even more about precious metals.
Platinum
Platinum is one of the rarest precious metals on Earth, there are more quantities of platinum on the moon and meteorites than on Earth. Although the price of platinum has skyrocketed in recent years, gold remains the more expensive than platinum. People are investing more in platinum lately because it really is less expensive to start investing in it.
Platinum does not have nearly the history that gold and silver do, it has only been known about for a fraction of the time of both those precious metals. The first sighting of platinum was on the casket of Thebes in Egypt. It was originally thought to be a mixture of gold and silver and not much was known about it. Some tribes in South America also used platinum in nose rings and other jewelry used for ceremonies.
The Spanish Conquistadors discovered platinum in the 1600s while they were mining for gold. They did not think much of it and just cast it aside because it was in the way of the gold. They called this new metal “Platina” which meant “little silver” and that word later became platinum.
Platinum was then officially discovered by Antonio de Ulloa, a Spanish mariner in 1736 in Colombia. That is when he wrote the first scientific description of the metal, which interested scientists who thought it was interesting that it did not corrode and the fact that they could not melt it. It was much later when temperatures could be made higher that they finally discovered the melting point of platinum.
In the late 1800s, the Cartier family began to use platinum in making jewelry. This caused the royals of the world to become infatuated with it. This caused both the Cartier family and the precious metal to become world-famous.
Until the early 1800s platinum was only found in Colombia, but then in 1819, it was found in Russia in the Ural Mountains. This helped to make platinum more accessible to the masses and then it was found in Canada in 1888. Canada was the world’s leading producer of platinum until World War I when it was discovered in South Africa which is now the leading producer.
Conclusion
These precious metals are still among the most popular metals for investors and collectors around the world. They have rich and varied histories that make them worth more for people who want to invest in them. These precious metals can be found at different investment companies all over the world.
