Inuvik (Oct 22/04) - Todd Moran may not be sitting on a gold mine, but the pound of gold he won in the Lions Club Delta Daze draw may be worth holding onto for a while.

The reason being that over the past year, the price of an ounce of gold has risen $9 in the last month alone.

Inuvik Lions Club president Bev Garven presents Todd Moran with a pound of gold he won in the Delta Daze Grand Prize Draw Oct. 10. - photo courtesy of Chris Garven

Everything from strife in the Middle East to low interest rates in America have been credited with gold's surge in value and on Monday, an ounce of gold closed in New York at slightly more than $418 American. And Moran has 16 ounces of the stuff that, since the dawn of time, has driven some to madness.

"It's my new bling-bling," joked Moran about his shiny windfall. "I'm going to put some of it in my cavities."

No, Moran has not gone mad, but he has gotten a touch giddy with the favourable prospects of sitting on his new-found treasure for a while.

"The first day it dropped seven bucks," he said of the price of an ounce of gold. "But I've heard it might go up to as high as $800."

It remains to be seen whether Moran decides to put his prize towards travel plans at the Christmas holidays, or, as he puts it, "keep it for a rainy day."

Time adds value

While his pound was worth slightly more than $8,000 on Monday, it could become considerably more valuable as time passes.

If market speculation that gold will continue to rise isn't enough of a reason to keep it for a while, perhaps this nugget will tip the scales.

It has been said that nothing holds its value as gold does and a cursory look at gold prices over the past 150 years shows this to be true -- when calculating adjustments for inflation.

Take, for example, the price of gold in 1899 at the peak of the Klondike Goldrush.

Then, the price of gold was about $20 an ounce, roughly the equivalent of the cost of a new suit and a nice meal in 1899 dollars.

More than 100 years later, $20 won't get you a sirloin, let alone a suit. However, the value of an ounce of gold would be enough for new threads and a trip to the Green Briar. How about that?

And how does one go about getting a pound of gold?

Well, you can either wait another year and get lucky like Moran, stake a claim and pray, or you can head to the bank as Lions Club President Bev Garven did.

"It was fairly simple," she said. "Just tell the bank you want to buy it and it takes a couple of weeks. This came in 16 one-ounce pieces."

For the rest of us, we might try looking at the end of the next rainbow.