January 23, 2009
Did you know that you can tour the Federal Reserve Bank in New York City? It seems like such an important bank would be off-limits, but they welcome you to take a guided tour. The bank offers a free tour that lasts half an hour. And as you can probably imagine, gold plays a big part in the day-to-day operations at the Federal Reserve Bank and in the tour.
In fact the tour begins with by playing a little joke on visitors as they wait to begin. The tour kicks off with a hologram showing a gold bar that slowly spins accompanied by an instruction to help yourself to some gold. It is actually surprising that the Federal Reserve would include this kind of humor for visiting guests, since they really do not want you take any of the gold there and there are stiff penalties if you do.
The bank also has a large number of unusual coins and other types of currency that is receive on loan from the American Numismatic Society. This collection includes a 1933 Double Eagle gold coin that was sold for almost $8 million at an auction no too long ago. The Double Eagle gold coin is one that was produced in limited quantities, so that makes it especially valuable.
In the days before September 11, the tour of the Federal Reserve included a visit to the trading floors, but that has since been cut out of the public tour. Instead, the bank has decided to make its gold vault the featured part of its tour.
The gold vault is located five stories below street level. There you can see gold bars stack in neat columns that reach the ceiling of the gold vault. Each of these gold bars is valued at approximately $320,000. Interestingly enough, ninety percent of the gold at the Federal Reserve Bank is the property of other countries.
Of course you don’t have to travel far beneath the ground to see stacks of gold bars to get a real idea of the value of gold. When you decide to sell gold to a gold buyer, you will be quite pleased to find that the cash for gold you get is in line with the current prices for gold. As we have mentioned, gold prices are going to remain strong in 2009.