Candy Bar Or Gold Bar? Two Companies Offer Solid Gold Via Vending Machines.

Historically, during financial downturns, the price of precious metals rises. Paranoia about the safety of financial institutions and the future of the world economy has people investing in precious metals like gold, platinum and silver, driving prices up. At the moment, gold is actually off the charts having reached its highest prices in history.



Capitalizing on this trend is not one, but two, different companies that manufacture vending machines that dispense solid 24k gold krugerrands and/or coins.



In Las Vegas, Gold Rush kiosks by Korean company Hon, popped up this year and just recently Gold To Go installed their first Gold ATM vending machine in the Arab Emirates Hotel in Abu Dhabi.

While both brands make machines that take cash or credit cards, have touch screen menu navigation and the price of gold is kept updated at global market value via computer, there are differences. Most notably, the fact that the Gold Rush kiosks offer a shipping or gift option. You can enter an address into the touch screen when ordering, customize your card with special celebratory messages and the gold bar card will arrive at your chosen destination within 1 to 2 days of your purchase. They also offer a different number of gold denominations - Gold To Go offers 10 products, Gold Rush offers 6.

Gold To Go Vending Machines


Aesthetically, Gold-To-Go has the edge with an actual gold-plated vending machine. Specially branded coins and bars are available too, like the one shown below for the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi where they installed a "Gold To Go" brand gold vending machine for guests.



According to Gold To Go, "the business philosophy of selling precious metals via gold vending machines, is to give potential customers a sense of being able to acquire precious metals of highest quality (24 carat) at reasonable prices. Additionally the customer receives a money-back-guarantee. The bargain is largely independent of opening hours and without participation of sales personnel in a pleasant and reputable environment."






German company Ex Oriente Lux AG designed the machines.


GOLD RUSH vending machines


The Hon Corp., a Korean jewelry group and manufacturer with branches in New York and Hong Kong, unveiled its first Gold Rush vending machine in June 2009 in Seoul. Hon now has 20 machines in stores throughout Korea. The gold-bar cards are the size of credit cards and they offer 6 sizes, ranging from 0.5 gram to 10 grams.




A customer can get a card right out of the machine or have it sent to a specific address. "We wanted to change the role of gold, not only [as an] investment but as a gift," says David Lee, general manager of Hon. The company next hopes to install its machines in U.S. casinos, supermarkets, and other stores, he says.




Over beers two years ago, Virginia entrepreneurs Tim Oldfield and Price Shapiro devised a plan to make cashing in old jewelry quicker and more convenient than mailing it to a cash-for-gold broker or going to a pawnshop. They opened their first Goldrush kiosk in 2008 in a Virginia Beach (Va.) shopping center. The company now has 300 kiosks in the U.S. and 200 in Australia, with plans to expand to Asia and Europe, says Maurice Levine, Goldrush's global director.

Both companies plan to expand their machine locations into airports, convention centers, casinos, shopping malls and hotels in the near future.

Gold To Go
Gold Rush

Johnny Swing Turns Cold Hard Cash & Currency Into Furniture & Textiles. Literally.

A trained sculptor and licensed welder, 49 year old Vermont-based artist Johnny Swing, an alumnus of Skidmore College and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture uses found materials and objects to repurpose into art, furniture and more.


above: artist and welder Johnny Swing on his Nickel couch

With a vast amount of work to his credit, it's his American coin-soldered furniture and paper currency printed objects I want to share with you today. Below are several angles, images and information pertaining to his soldered coin furniture followed by some of his textile objects made with dollar printed fabrics.

The Nickel Couch, 2006:


His second in his series of furniture made from coins, the nickel couch is comprised of 7,000 nickles, 35,000 welds, and a substructure of stainless truss work utilizing 350 feet of stiffening rods. 80"wide x 42"deep x 28.5" high and weighs 125 pounds.




above: Swing's Nickel Couch, 2001, fetched over $100,000 at auction at Sotheby in December of 2009.

Quarter Lounge, 2008:

Quarters and stainless steel, 96 x 47 x 28 inches



Half Dollar Butterfly Chair, 2009:


The third in his series of coin furniture, the Butterfly chair, reveals an exposed substructure and is made of 1,500 half dollar coins and 7,000 welds. 46"wide x 32"deep x 34" high and weighs 58 lbs.




The Quarter Chair:


The fourth in his series of coin pieces, the Quarter chair has an hourglass shape and is made from approximately 1,200 quarters. The shape and proportion are that of traditional diningroom furniture. 21" wide x 24" deep x 36" high and weighs 28 lbs.





The Loose Change Chair:


The fifth in the series of coin furniture, this was inspired by the childhood game Booby Trap. The substructure is created from technology shared from airplane wing design; it flexes to the ground but is torsionally rigid to accommodate thousands of pounds.




The Quarter Stool:


Nickel Bowl:
His bowls are an effort to play with other shapes that force the constrained circular coin into complex forms and patterns similar to mosque screens and Native American woven baskets.


All The Kings Men, 2010:


One of his most recent pieces, All the Kings Men is a curved settee with soldered open framework underside made of half dollars and stainless steel and measures 97" x 52" x 28" inches.






As Kiera Scholten reported for Artworks Magazine about his Coin series in 2008:

When he began using coins, Swing says it wasn’t simply about money as a material-”it was about taking what was a useless piece of money and kind of making it special again.” With this idea in mind he constructed his first piece out of pennies. What many consider America’s most disposable piece of coinage suited his purpose perfectly. Swing was happy with his first piece, which he modeled after a Bertoli chair, but using the pennies became a problem. After 1981 pennies were made with zinc, which caused them to disintegrate when welded together. Finding thousands of pennies dating before Reagan took office made an already labor-intensive process even more of a chore.

So he moved on to nickels. He’s now created 20 nickel couches, each assembled using about 7,000 of the Jefferson coins-that’s $350. His half-dollar chair utilizes about 1,500 coins, or $750. The price of these pieces, though, is much more than face value. You would have to save a lot of five-cent pieces to afford the couch made of them. An original Johnny Swing Nickel Couch can be had for upwards of $50,000. But the price pays for a painstaking process; for one couch it takes more than 300 hours to complete the 35,000 welds that hold all the coins together.

Welding coins together simply to sit on them may seem like a strange concept, and some critics are quick to classify Swing’s work as “bad boy art” under the assumption that he’s defacing money by using it in this manner. At first, even Swing wasn’t sure if his art was illegal, though his original answer was that “the government doesn’t care if you use their objects in art; they’re sort of flattered.” He soon thought he had better check it out to be certain, so he called the Secret Service, which at the time was a part of the U.S. Treasury. “They said, ‘It’s your money, do with it what you want,’” says Swing. “The agent told me the rumor that destroying money is illegal is just an old wives’ tale to keep kids from putting coins on the railroad tracks.” Swing could breathe a sigh of relief and move ahead with his work.

In addition to using coins, he has also created the following pieces using fabric printed with US Currency.

Piggy:



Teddy Bear:


Throw pillow:

By the way, you can purchase the Dollar Teddy ($1,250.00) and the Butterfly Coin chair ($59,000.00) here at Vivre.

all images courtesy of the artist