| Gold is currently about $580 a troy ounce. This makes a 12.5kg gold brick (like you see in the movies) worth around $230,000.
In a former life I once did a stocktake of the precious metals inventory (bullion and coins) for a rather large Swiss bank. They were in the process of consolidating the three main vaults into one new big vault the size of two football pitches in the centre of Zurich.
I remember thinking at the time that one gold bar was worth the same as the house that I had just bought, and the pallet it was in was the equivalent to my street. I was there for 3 weeks so you can imagine how many pallets there were!
The best bit though was the 6 cannisters of granulated rhodium, each the size of a large thermos. When I asked how much each one was worth, the casual reply was "about $2m dollars. We keep meaning to transfer them into nicer containers but we don't want to spill it!"
Back to the point - they might be worth something Paul but the cost to extract it would be too high to make it worthwhile.  |