Has The Gold In Fort Knox Disappeared?

The United States Bullion Depository Fort Knox, Kentucky.

• Amount of present gold holdings: 147.3 million ounces. • The only gold removed has been very small quantities used to test the purity of gold during regularly scheduled audits. Except for these samples, no gold has been transferred to or from the Depository for many years. • The gold is held as an asset of the United States at book value of $42.22 per ounce. • The Depository opened in 1937; the first gold was moved to the depository in January that year. • Highest gold holdings this century: 649.6 million ounces (December 31, 1941). • Size of a standard gold bar: 7 inches x 3 and 5/8 inches x 1 and 3/4 inches. • Weight of a standard gold bar: approximately 400 ounces or 27.5 pounds. • Construction of the depository: Building materials used included 16,000 cubic feet of granite, 4,200 cubic yards of concrete, 750 tons of reinforcing steel, and 670 tons of structural steel. The cost of construction was $560,000 and the building was completed in December 1936. • The Depository is a classified facility. No visitors are permitted, and no exceptions are made.

In 1950 the US owned about 20,000 metric tons of gold – approximately 640,000,000 troy ounces. By August 15, 1971 when President Nixon “temporarily” closed the “gold window” that hoard had decreased to about 8,100 tons.

1974 file photo gold bars are seen at the U.S. Depository in Ft. Knox, Ky.

President Nixon had a choice – default on the US promise to redeem dollars with gold, or reduce spending. Like any prominent politician he chose to continue spending and to blame the problem on someone else – the “international money speculators” but it might as well have been the Russians, Democrats, the French, Communists, an ethnic group, or the weather.

The US government spends roughly $3.5 Trillion per year and adds nearly $1 Trillion each year to the national debt. The official 260,000,000 ounces of gold are currently valued at about $340 Billion. The President and Congress would burn through the market value of that gold in slightly more than a month.

The Federal Reserve has “printed” well over $3,000,000,000,000 since the financial crisis of 2008 – about ten times the current market value of all the gold that the US supposedly still has in its vaults. Global annual gold production is about 2,500 tons, about 80,000,000 ounces or about $105,000,000,000. One hundred five billion dollars in global gold production is produced through the considerable efforts of the global gold mining community. But the Fed chose to “crank up the printing presses” and effortlessly created over $3 Trillion in new digital dollars since 2008.

The biggest question mark of all has been why no one has been able to see the gold for almost 40 years now. The last time anyone had access to inspect the deposits was on September 23, 1974. Members of Congress and news media were allowed access on that date and pictures were taken of the vaults with the gold deposits intact.

Ever since that day, there has not been anyone allowed access to confirm the gold amounts that are supposedly stored at the Fort. Recently a team of Congressmen from several key states have been trying to gain access to Fort Knox for a visual inspection and confirmation of the gold reserves stored there. According to several of the Congressmen, they are having a difficult time even getting responses out of the United States Treasury and Mint departments and when they do, they are denied immediately.

THE CONSPIRACY THEORISTS fear that Ft. Knox is emptied, a process that started 50 years ago. Some gold bugs go even further, claiming that Ft. Knox's gold bars have been replaced with fakes filled with super-dense tungsten.

Argyle Pink Diamonds Tender 2014

Rio Tinto’s iconic Argyle pink diamonds tender was unveiled during a world exclusive preview in Sydney, Australia last month. The 2014 collection is comprised of 55 diamonds, including 51 pink and purplish-red diamonds and four fancy red diamonds.

The Argyle Cardinal

The star of the tender is a radiant cut, 1.21 carat, Fancy Red diamond named after the red North American bird. Some industry experts believe this stone could break the “per-carat” record of $1.6 million for a Fancy Red diamond.

The Argyle Rosette

Other diamonds headlining the 2014 collection are the Argyle Rosette which is a 2.17 carat fancy intense purple-pink emerald cut diamond and the Argyle Toki which is a 1.59 carat fancy intense purplish-pink emerald-cut diamond.

Argyle Toki

See ----->http://pennystockjournal.blogspot.ca/2014/07/2014-argyle-pink-diamonds-tender.html
See -----> http://pennystockjournal.blogspot.ca/2014/04/rio-tintos-rough-diamond-tender.html

1652 US threepenny found in Nottinghamshire

Minted 360 years ago, the uneven, hand-hammered silver coin wouldn’t have gone too far. Today the silver threepenny coin that amateur treasure-hunter John Stoner dug up in a farmer’s field could probably buy an estate.

The extremely rare New England coin, bearing the date 1652, is expected to sell for up to £1million when it is auctioned. It has been hailed as one of the finest examples of a currency produced in the days of the Pilgrim Fathers in a land that would become the United States. How the 17th century threepenny ended up in the village of King’s Clipstone, Nottinghamshire is not known.

It was made by placing a blank silver disc on an engraved die, sandwiching it with another die for the reverse side, then hitting it with a hammer. The III in Roman numerals shows its denomination to differentiate it from tuppence, sixpence and shilling coins. Although it bears the date 1652, the oak tree on one side shows could have been minted in any year between 1653, when the original simpler design was changed to beat counterfeiters, and 1682, when a new series of coins was introduced. Coin expert Peter Spencer confirmed it was a genuine threepenny piece from the first authorized colonial coinage, commissioned and struck in Boston, Massachusetts.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2745782/Minted-Dug-Midlands-field-1m-perfect-US-threepenny-bit-time-Pilgrim-Fathers.html

The Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes

The Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes was a frigate belonging to the Spanish Armada, which was launched at the port of Havana 1786 and was part of the convoy that covered the trade route between the American colonies and Spain. On 5 October 1804 at the Battle of Cape Santa Maria, Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, commanded by José Manuel de Goicoa and Labart, was sunk in waters near the Strait of Gibraltar.

While sailing back from South America with more than 200 people on board, the ship was intercepted by British ships. Spain was a neutral country at the time, but had been showing signs of declaring war in alliance with Napoleonic France. The galleon was ordered to change course towards England, but its senior Spanish officer refused and opened fire on the British. Tales recount that the Mercedes broke 'like an egg, dumping her yolk into the deep'. After the attack most of the survivors were rescued from one or two small boats. The English Prize Office removed 4,773,153 gold and silver pesos from three captured ships, 1,307,634 of which belonged to the king of Spain. After the incident, Spain declared war on England.

In late 2012 a treasure haul was salvaged and displayed. The loot had been at the center of a five-year legal battle between a U.S. salvage company and Spain. US firm Odyssey Marine Exploration found the lost treasure off Portugal's Atlantic coast in 2007. At the time, the treasure was estimated to be worth $500m (£316m).

International treaties generally hold that warships sunk in battle are protected from treasure seekers. Odyssey lost every round in federal courts as the Spanish government painted the company as modern-day pirates. The company has said in earnings statements that it has spent $2.6 million salvaging, transporting, storing and conserving the treasure.

The San Miguel & The Lost 1715 Treasure Fleet

On July 31, 1715 eleven of the twelve Spanish ships sailing from Havana to Spain with royal treasure were wrecked by a violent hurricane on the east coast of Florida from St. Lucie to Cape Canaveral. Seven days after departing from Havana, Cuba, the ships were lost in a hurricane near present day Vero Beach, Florida.

Seven of these Spanish treasure laden ships were scattered over the reefs from south of Fort Pierce to the Sebastian Inlet. Spanish coins of all types (gold and silver) started to be found on the beaches in the 1950s after strong nor'easters or a violent hurricane. This part of Florida's Atlantic east coast quickly became known as the Treasure Coast.

The (El Senor) San Miguel - was a 22 gun NAO Class (Fast Carrack). It very likely contained a significant portion of the treasure. It is believed the ship separated from the fleet the day before the storm struck and the wreck has never been found. It is believed only a small fraction of the treasure of the lost 1715 Treasure Fleet has been recovered.

1715 Fleet ships believed to have been found are: 1 - Nuestra Senora de la Regla 2 - Santo Cristo de San Roman 3 - Nuestra Senora del Carmen 4 - Nuestra Señora de La Popa 5 - Nuestra Senora del Rosario 6 - Urca de Lima 7 - Nuestra Senora de las Nieves

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Ships of the 1715 Fleet never located are the: 8 - Maria Galante 9 - El Senor San Miguel 10 - El Cievro 11 - Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion 12 - Griffon made it safely and went on to France

VERO BEACH — Bonnie Schubert couldn’t believe her eyes when, about 1,000 feet off Frederick Douglass Beach near Fort Pierce, she came face to face with a solid gold statue of a bird that had lain under the Atlantic Ocean exactly 295 years and 15 days.

“I remember asking myself, ‘Is this real?’” Schubert recalled Wednesday as the 5.5-inch-tall statue she found Aug. 15 was revealed to the public at her home in the Vero Shores neighborhood of Vero Beach.“The Bird,” as it’s come to be known, is real all right. So is it’s $885,000 appraised value. The statue was aboard one of 11 Spanish ships laden with treasures from the New World that were bound from Havana to the court of King Phillip V before encountering a hurricane July 31, 1715, and sinking off the Treasure Coast.

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Urcas were flat-bottomed, round-bellied Dutch storage ships designed to go in shallow waters. Due to their capacity for carrying cargo, they were adopted for the Spanish-American trade route between Europe and the New World. The Urca de Lima was one of 10 treasure ships on their way back to Spain from Havana in 1715.

All were lost in a hurricane off the Atlantic coast. More than 700 seamen, including the Spanish commander, drowned from the 10 ships.

While there was no great royal treasure on board, the Urca De Lima did contain private chests of silver and some gold. After it was grounded by the storm, the Urca De Lima was one of the first vessels to be salvaged by the Spanish, who subsequently burned the hull down to the waterline to hide its location from the English. The Urca De Lima was rediscovered in 1928. For the next half century the wreck was heavily salvaged. In the 1980s, the state of Florida stopped issuing salvage permits on the Urca De Lima and opened the wreck to the public as the state’s first Underwater Archaeological Preserve.

See ----->http://pennystockjournal.blogspot.ca/2014/08/more-gold-found-off-treasure-coast.html
See ----->http://pennystockjournal.blogspot.ca/2013/09/more-spanish-gold-found-off-treasure.html
See ----->http://pennystockjournal.blogspot.ca/2013/07/gold-coins-from-1715-treasure-fleet.html