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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;TDRismyname, post: 975504, member: 26939&quot;]Well, as far as conductors go, the difference between silver, gold, and copper... the three best conductors in reverse order, is so tiny that it really makes little difference when your dealing with commercial power, but all the wires used on the first atomic bombs (and possibly every one after) were silver... silver is also a low-temp superconductor... not much use in MRIs or commercial use but there are type 1 and type II superconductors, the second of which contains most &quot;high temp&quot; (liquid nitrogen cooled) superconductors... but has certain disadvantages over type I &quot;pure&quot; superconductors like silver. Silver cooled with liquid helium can be drawn into a wire a millimeter in diameter and conduct virtually infinite amounts of electricity, whereas exotic high-temp superconductors are limited in their capacity to conduct energy. For research purposes silver is still used, along with other metals, for 10-20MW electromagnets needed for a tokamak fusion reactor. But my main point is copper is so cheap and so similar to gold (the difference is miniscule) in conductivity that gold ceases to be of any real use. Platinum is much harder than gold and that&#039;s part of the reason why so few people mint it... it&#039;s not nearly as malleable and heat doesn&#039;t start to change that until you get into the 3000+F range, which is why it&#039;s used in superalloys for turbine engines. if you threw your gold coin on a propane grill it would be destroyed almost immediatly, your platinum coin would be fine, you&#039;d just have to wash off the carbon residue. The only material that really beats platinum in both heat risistance, oxidation resistance, and hardness is W2C, Tungsten carbide containing mostly Tungsten... I have a ring that&#039;s made of said metal and it&#039;s virtually indestructable.... a nuclear weapon could detonate within 50 feet of where I&#039;m standing and all that&#039;d be left is that ring. The british use it in they&#039;re 120mm Sub-calibre Sabot rounds and it penetrates better than the USA&#039;s DU (depleted uranium) rods but it doesn&#039;t give the enemy cancer nor does it light on fire on contact with air... I guess the british care a little more about their soldiers along with the environment than we do, or more likely we would rather find use for such dangerous and unwanted materials along with our generals enjoying the idea of a burning white-hot rod of uranium landing in the T-62 drivers lap. </p><p><br /></p><p>If you got your gold at 350 anytime recently then you got a great deal, I payed a few dollars less than that for my long-term investment (several 10kg bars from dubai, care of a friend w/ a large boat and a lot of free time) in gold. It took 2 years (from 2000 to 2002) to get fro dubai to here, but the taxes I would&#039;ve payed on that much gold made it worth the wait, along with the anonymity of dubai-based gold purchases. Anyway I don&#039;t believe in any of that &quot;end of the world&quot; bs... if this government collapsed the LAST thing on earth anybody would want is gold... they&#039;d want useful stuff like weapons, food, water, salt. If you&#039;re some nutjob who thinks &quot;the end is nigh&quot; you should invest in rice, salt, and dried beef... and ruger mini-14s, not gold. If I&#039;m the other genius who foresaw the end why aren&#039;t I just gonna take your gold with my mini-14 and bulletproof vest? Not such a great investment if you don&#039;t believe in the US Govt.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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