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 One ounce bullion bar.
I purchased several small bars of gold for spurious reasons in the early 1990s from a coin dealer near Berkeley, California. They added up to one ounce total. In April 2002 I traded them for a single one ounce bar at Specialty Stamp and Coin in Champaign, Illinois (for $25). I then had a 14K gold loop welded to the back of it by Brian Knox jewelers, Champaign, Illinois, so it could be locked down to the table with a length of stainless steel cable.
Pure gold is incredibly soft! It keeps getting bent, but I think if I put a label on it saying "please don't bend the gold" it would only make the problem worse.
Source: Coin Shop in California
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 15 April, 2002
Price: $400/including loop
Size: 1.5"
Purity: 99.99%
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 Antique nugget.
If Ed didn't already have his name engraved on the Contributors tile, this would definitely have gotten him on it. I estimate it's about an ounce, but the real value is in the fact that it's a natural gold nugget, obviously very well handled. It came from Ed's grandfather who was a shoe trader in Alaska. It is a great honor to be the temporary custodian of this object, which is all anyone can be to a nugget that will outlive us all by a wide margin.
I remember once in grade school, when we lived in Australia, visiting a gold panning river. The guide let the class pass around a gold nugget not unlike this one. The only thing I remember from that trip is holding the gold. That, and the texture of the walls in the room, the scrape of the floor, the voice of the guide, the coat I was wearing, how we were sitting, everything about the instant that the gold passed through my hands. I couldn't tell you what river it was, how we got there, how old I was, nothing, just one instant of gold from a long time ago.
Maybe some day an old man or woman, now only a child, will remember the moment this nugget passed through their hands on a visit to the Periodic Table. They'll see in their mind the sand pendulum, smell again the beeswax finish, unnoticed by adults but close to the nose of a child, and feel as if yesterday the incredible weight of this tiny thing in their hands.
Gold is like that.
Analysis by x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy at the Center for Microanalysis of Materials, University of Illinois (partially supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under grant DEFG02-91-ER45439) indicates that this nugget is 88.7% gold and 10.6% silver, which makes it about 21 caret gold. That's pretty typical for native gold, I believe.
Source: Ed Pegg Jr
Contributor: Ed Pegg Jr
Acquired: 3 September, 2002
Price: Donated
Size: 0.75"
Purity: 88.7%
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Antique coin.
I bought this coin in the early 1990s from a coin dealer near Berkeley, California. I think it's about 90% gold, but I'm not sure. Of course it's no doubt well known by coin dealers how pure it is, and how much it's worth. I don't actually remember the price I paid, but I'm guessing around $100.
A reader, Kane Imai, has helpfully pointed me to a website which lists the value at several hundred dollars, depending on condition. So I think I did OK on this one.
Source: Coin Shop in California
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 15 April, 2002
Price: $100
Size: 0.5"
Purity: 90%
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Three ounce bar.
Measured strictly by monetary value, the two most expensive samples in the periodic table are this bar of gold, and the ten gram ampule of scandium. Both are worth well over a thousand dollars, and both were donated (the scandium outright, this bar on a semi-permanent loan basis).
It's very gratifying to know that people think my periodic table is a worthy home for such valuable objects. I certainly never expected to get any significant number of donated elements, let alone truly valuable ones.
In the case of this gold bar, there's another factor: Its mystique. Of course, the first thing you notice about it is the weight. It's damn heavy. It's crudely made: This is not the product of an industrial gold refining operation. From the shape and markings, it's clear the bar was made by pouring molten gold into a rectangular groove in a course material, possibly sand. The bar tapers slightly, which means the mold was not level. It ends in a round bullnose, which means the gold cooled and solidified before reaching the end of the groove. That in turn means the gold was just barely molten, as if bringing it to the melting point required a long effort and it was poured just as soon as it could be. The other end has clearly been cut with a dull sheer or chisel (the metal is bunched up, indicating that the tool used to cut it was relatively thick, and pushed the metal back as it was going through).
All in all, it bears a striking resemblance to the tin bars I made by pouring molten tin into sand grooves. Whoever made the gold bar obviously spent a bit more time and care making the mold than I did, but not a whole lot more.
Analysis by x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy at the Center for Microanalysis of Materials, University of Illinois (partially supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under grant DEFG02-91-ER45439) indicates the following composition:
99.42% Gold
0.32% Copper
0.26% Silver
This is 24 caret pure gold, almost qualifying as .999 fine.
One could speculate endlessly about who, when, where, and why this bar was made. Was it a jeweler who was just consolidating scraps, with the intention of using a rolling mill to form the bar into the various bar and sheet stock he'd use to make jewelry out of? It's the right shape, but jewelry gold is never that pure (it's too soft in pure form).
Or was it a gold miner consolidating gold into easily cut bars for sale or trade? There are no stamps or assay marks, which means it was not made for resale by a foundry, large or small. But it could have been an individual miner.
Perhaps a thief or fence melted down stolen jewelry to disguise its identity. Maybe it was part of a nobleman's hoard, consolidated from taxes. There are so many possibilities, from the mundane to the exotic, that you can't help but speculate while holding it.
Sometimes it's more than a little creepy. If you look at it just right, it looks like a finger. A gold finger, thin, bony, and cruel. Other times it just looks like a working jeweler's blank, nothing sinister at all. But with gold, evil is never far away. Gold, literal or figurative, has been the focus of greed and injustice for longer than anyone can say. It may be disguised in the form of pretty jewelry that delights the eye, but melt it back down to a crude bar like this, and you reveal the truth: People lust after gold not because it is pretty, but because it is gold.
Source: George (not 007) Lazenby
Contributor: George (not 007) Lazenby
Acquired: 21 October, 2002
Price: Donated
Size: 3"
Purity: 99.42%
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Eensy-weensy nuggets.
These are about a hundred tiny natural gold nuggets with a total weight of 1.0017 grams. More like flakes than nuggets really. I ordered some tiny bottles and plan to give interested kids who visit the table a real gold nugget to take home.
Source: eBay seller thegoldman
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 25 October, 2002
Price: $35
Size: 0.1"
Purity: >90%
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Sample from the Everest Element Set.
Up until the early 1990's a company in Russia sold a periodic table collection with element samples. At some point their American distributor sold off the remaining stock to a man who is now selling them on eBay. The samples (excepted gasses) weight about 0.25 grams each, and the whole set comes in a very nice wooden box with a printed periodic table in the lid.
To learn more about the set you can visit my page about element collecting for a general description and information about how to buy one, or you can see photographs of all the samples from the set displayed on my website in a periodic table layout or with bigger pictures in numerical order.
Source: Rob Accurso
Contributor: Rob Accurso
Acquired: 7 February, 2003
Price: Donated
Size: 0.2"
Purity: >99%
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