GOLD, GOLD & Gold

A visitor touches the world's largest solid gold brick weighing 220kg (worth over US $7.8 million at today's price), at the Jinguashi Gold Museum in Ruifang, Taipei county, on December 2, 2009.

Hava Katz, the head of the national treasures of Israel's Antiquities Authority, holds up a 1,000-year-old gold coin minted in Egypt and dated 1,095 AD, supposedly brought to Jerusalem by Muslim pilgrims, during an exhibition at the Davidson Archaeological centre in Jerusalem's Old city on November 11, 2009.

A statue of a bird of prey made of gold is pictured at a gold and silver exhibition at the Ginza Tanaka store in Tokyo October 23, 2009.

An artisan makes gold ornaments at a jewelery factory in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata November 13, 2009

A man holds a spoon full of gold leaf, ready to eat it with his sushi at the "Seven Sushi Samurai" Sushi of the Year awards 2009 at the Olympia exhibition center in west London, on November 14, 2009.The gold leaf was an ingredient in last year's winner Mitsunori Kusakabe's entry.

Children from the Turkana area of Kanukurdio pan for flakes of gold which helps sustain their families on November 9, 2009 near Lodwar, Kenya.

A pure gold statue of Buddha is displayed at the Ginza Tanaka store in Tokyo November 26, 2009.

Trays with gold ingots are placed in a room for final weighing and packaging at the Krastsvetmet plant in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk November 16, 2009.

Pedro Linares uses a calculator to determine how much the company he works for, Fast Cash Gold Parties, will pay for the gold jewelry that he is weighing on October 30, 2009 in Hialeah, Florida. As the price of gold remains high, the company is busy setting up these modern day Tupperware parties to buy people's unwanted gold in their homes.

Gold figurines on display in a shop window in Hong Kong on November 17, 2009.

Colombian gold prospectors mine for the precious metal on the river Dagau, Zaragoza province, Cauca, Colombia on November 17, 2009. About 8,000 gold prospectors work illegally on the Dagua river to support their families

A gold trader weighs gold in Cauca, Colombia on November 17, 2009

Metal detector enthusiast David Booth poses with his hoard of Iron Age Gold on November 4, 2009 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Booth discovered the Iron Age Gold buried on private land in Stirlingshire -the items dating from between 300-100 BC. The hoard is currently under protection of the Treasure Trove Unit, under Scottish law, the Crown can claim any archaeological objects found in Scotland.

Gold-toothed football player Chris Johnson of the Tennessee Titans sits on the bench during their game against the San Francisco 49ers at Candlestick Park on November 8, 2009 in San Francisco.

A gold miner pushes a wheelbarrow to carry rocks which will be processed for gold in an artisanal mine in Abangares, north of San Jose, Costa Rica on December 9, 2009. Costa Rica is pushing to legalize a 600 informal miners of small-scale miners who scrape out tiny amounts of gold from abandoned mine shafts using dangerous and polluting techniques.

People work in an illegal gold mine in a national park forest near Novo Progresso in Brazil's northern state of Paral on September 15, 2009.

A Christie's employee looks at a creation "Relief Eponge" by Yves Klein on display at the auction house in London, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2010. The gold sponge relief creation is to be auctioned at the "Post-war and Contemporary" sale on Feb. 11 with an estimated price of 5.7 to 8 million euros (US $8.2 to 11.4 million).

A model displays pure gold Disney character dolls showing Snow White and the seven dwarfs, priced at 30 million yen ($300,000 USD) and produced by Tanaka Kikinzoku Jewelry in Tokyo on November 4, 2009for the promotion of Blu-ray disks of Disney movies.

A Caterpillar Inc. mining truck moves along a road at the AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. Cripple Creek & Victor gold mine in Victor/Cripple Creek, Colorado, on Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009. AngloGold Ashanti Ltd., Africa's largest gold producer, purchased Golden Cycle Gold Corp. in January 2008 to gain full control of this mining site, its only active operation in the U.S.

Sharon Brumley pours fusion samples into cone molds to determine the total gold content in a sample at the AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. Cripple Creek & Victor gold mine in Colorado on Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009.

A woman wades deep under a river bank to collect mud to pan for gold in Pidie district in Indonesia's Aceh province November 2, 2009. Residents in the area engaged in traditional gold mining can getabout 1.5-2 grams of gold and earn 275,000 rupiah ($28) per day

Gold busts of (l-r) Chinese leaders President Hu Jintao, former president Jiang Zemin, late patriarch Deng Xiaoping and Mao Zedong, are displayed at a gold exhibition in Beijing, China on November 8, 2009.

An overall view of the open pit gold-copper Cadia mine in Orange district in Australia on January 8, 2010.

A Japanese girl admires a gold model named "Wishing to shooting stars" at a gold and silver craft exhibition in Tokyo on October 23, 2009. The 30cm-tall, 15kg pure gold artifact is worth 130 million yen (US $1.3 million).

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