Gold is a funny material...
I was told that there is actually more gold in the ground than silver, but due to gold fever; whether it be from us trudging all over the countryside to find it, or my wife wanting a 24 carat wedding band, rises its desirability. This has not changed since the caveman days when man found shiny soft thing in a stream, glossed it up and gave it to his woman.
And the volume mined is also a misnomer because of its unique properties. It can pounded into the thinnest sheets, and mixed easily with other elements to make it go pretty far.
The two points I just made enable gold to have a HUGE demand for recycling, probably one of the most recycled materials on earth due to its value and desirability. To wit, I do not see advertisements on television where companies make money sending out packets in the mail for you to send in copper objects that they will appraise for scrap value and send a check to you for. In that sense, it kind of stands outside the law of supply and demand in terms of in-ground-gold, and makes gold a world wide currency of sorts. To that end, in-ground discovered gold is only making up for the gold of the world that gets inadvertently taken out of circulation.
Even that could be short lived. As I often JOKE...it took a lot of shoveling in a cemetery for me to get Katie's diamond engagement ring! Now myself, I am only joking, cemeteries give me the creeps, but I have known many hermits growing up who had no qualms about entering old cemeteries long hidden in the woods with shovels, and grabbing those rings off long departed souls. What would happen if gold hit $2400 an ounce? I shutter to think, as I am sure the sales of shovels would drastically increase to make up the short fall.
