The world’s most valuable company plans to make an 18-karat gold encased version of its new watch, called the Apple Watch Edition. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that a person familiar with Apple’s plans said the firm expects to sell 1 million of these gilded watches every month.
Now, the internet is trying to calculate how much gold Apple will have to buy for the new watches, with some commentators speculating they could contain up to 2 troy ounces of gold per watch. If that’s the case, Apple would have to buy 750 tons of gold per year to produce 1 million watches a month.
That would take a huge bite out of global supply—the total amount of gold mined globally each year hovers around 3,000 tons, making the amount of gold in circulation roughly 4,000 tons.
Apple buying such large amounts of the yellow metal “would be a ‘game changer’ for the gold market,†said Jonathan Williams, a corporate broker at RFC Ambrian, in a research note.
