Board Thread:New on Marvel Cinematic Universe Wiki/@comment-1509585-20140804183803/@comment-25289146-20150406015440

In the comics Thanos easily outsmarted the Elders of the Universe (The Collector being one of them) to gain the 6 gems prior to his Infinity Gauntlet. He could have just as easily done the job he gave to Ronan, but was likely taking a small risk in Ronan keeping the Orb to himself. Thanos could have removed the Orb through a combination of force and smarts.

The same logic could be used with Loki and Thanos giving him the Scepter. If the Scepter and Tesseract were so easily linked why didn't Thanos use it to go to the Tesseract and just leave with both? He didn't need to give Loki orders to open the portal over NYC. Loki had the tesseract within the first few minutes of arriving and could have just as easily returned to Thanos with it. If that had been the case, the Avengers would have been a much shorter movie.

The strongest evidence pointing to the Scepter containing the Mind Stone is that it was used to control other's minds. The Tesseract may have had a similar power signature, but it did not have control anybody's minds. The Tesseract opened a portal to a distant galaxy/dimension (a la space gem). If it was another reality I would have assumed the Tesseract was the Reality Gem that coincidentally was given to Thanos when he was a "member" of Adam Warlock's Infinity Watch.

Let us say just for giggles that the Scepter does contain the Mind Stone. That leaves the Soul Gem and Time Gem. The Time Gem/Stone could play a prominent role in Captain America 3 to jump start Phase 3. The fun is in the speculation. The Soul Gem would fit best, or at least in my opinion, in GOTG 2 because it is closely linked to Adam Warlock. Warlock is also the antithesis of Thanos and the sooner he gets revealed the better. In the comics he was closely tied to the High Evolutionary, but in the MCU I could see Tivan as Warlock's "father figure."