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Comment by BizarroLand | Hacker News Reader

$9,000 for a 1cm cube. That's "winning the lotto impulse purchase" level for me.

It's not like that money disappears. Just think of it like buying gold bullion.

Unlike say, a $9000 motorcycle impulse purchase, a block of raw metal should hold it's inflation adjusted value relatively well for decades and you can sell it whenever to recoup the money.

Gold bullion has a healthy market to sell back into though.I don't know the numbers, but i wouldn't be surprised if I could easily sell gold for 80% of "market" value, whereas probably closer to 20% for something like Iridium that has a very small adressable market unless I were to expend considerable effort finding someone willing to pay what it's worth.

Platinum might be a better fit in this "really heavy" category. 21.447 grams/cc versus gold at 19.3 grams/cc.

Iridium is commonly used in jewelry; it's one of the platinum group metals.

It doesn't have the mass awareness of gold, but it's not some weird niche material either.

You could probably sell it to just about any gold dealer, as a lot of them sell iridium bars anyway. The tools they have to verify the purity of gold also work for other metals. If not, then they would certainly have connections to find someone who will buy it.

Also, you generally buy/sell on a 5-10% spread from the "spot" market price of the metal, depending on the quanitity you're dealing with. Dealers generally offer a closer price to spot when dealing with larger dollar value amounts of metal.

New form of investment?

Metals also survive pretty much anything, including catastrophic fires.

Gold can easily melt in a house fire. A diamond ring can turn into a puddle of gold and no diamond because it burned off

Melted gold is just as valuable as gold jewelry, since they melt it down anyway when you sell it. It might be worth marginally less than an intact piece of gold bullion that can be resold without processing.

Diamonds don't have resale value anyway. They're literally a scam.

One thing I've wondered, exactly how easy would it be to find a gold puddle after a fire anyway? I mean it's not going to vaporize or walk off on its own, but is it just going to be a little solidified glob there to pick up or what?

Yes but it will probably be blackened with soot which will make it hard to find.

Yes, it might flow around in the fire but it would be in the same area. A metal detector would be the fastest way to find it. Likely less time to find it solidified than looking for jewelry on a beach. Certainly less time than mining the gold.

I've found aluminum globs under fires that had cans or trashed roofing thrown in. Pretty clean, since nearly everything floats on it, and easy to spot in ashes.

Aluminum melts around 1200F. That’s a really hot fire! Was it a windy day?

(Lead, on the other hand, melts at half that.)

Once the core of the fire is mostly charcoal temperatures can climb up to 1100C. It doesn't have to be windy or even a large fire. Just need to be burning charcoal and not evaporating water or burning off volatiles.

The fires I have found aluminum globs in were long burning beach campfires and a bonfire to burn brush(big fire). The beach campfires were moderately sized but they certainly weren't bonfires built with 6-8 foot logs.

Diamonds do have significant markup depending on where it is purchased but they do still have some value. As long as the buyer can verify the certificate and the diamond is of significant quality, size, clarity, etc. it still retains value. A gemstone buyer may offer less than a private buyer (just like with cars) because they are in the business of selling the diamond later for a profit. Obviously, there is artificial inflation from the manufacturers but everyone else still has to play in the inflated market.

As for gold jewelry, this can swing both ways. An intricate piece with some sort of history attached may fetch a higher price from a buyer that is interested in that versus a scrap buyer that will just melt it down.

Similar analogies can be found with cars. A factory stock 1996 VW Golf will only be worth slightly higher than scrap value. Meanwhile, a 1996 VW Golf Harlequin will be worth $8-9k, its the same car but with a different factory paintjob. Effectively no difference in manufacturing costs since it was just made from different stock-painted panels but worth way more to a buyer simply due to the history and rarity. The cars both still have the same scrap value, a junkyard would buy both of them for the same price.

That's my point. Gold changes shape in a fire, but it's not lost.

I'll get myself a 10cm cube as a paper weight when I start and sell my multibillion asteroid mining startup.

I mean with any luck we'll find a pure iridium asteroid and bring the thing back to earth. Iridium paperweights for everyone!

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