Largest Private Refinery Discovers Gold-Plated Tungsten Bar

Coin Update News ^ | Mar 2, 2010 | Patrick Heller

[djf]

Recently, the German television station ProSieben ran a news story covering W. C. Heraeus in Hanau, Germany, the world’s largest privately owned refinery. In the story, Wilfried Hörner, the head of the gold foundry, shows a 500 gram bar (16.0755 troy ounces) received from an unidentified bank. The bar had the right physical dimensions to be an authentic gold bar, but one of the Heraeus employees suspected something funny. After the bar was cut in half, you can see that the inside is tungsten, with only a coating of gold on the outside.

[Paladin2]

Or they could have just weighed it.

[Lurker]

FYI

[Lurker]

Or they could have just weighed it.

Really? You might want to check that.

[masadaman]

According to YouTube comments, this happened over ten years ago, stale news.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Reminder to self...Drive a nail through each bar of gold you buy! If the nail bends or fails to go through, DON’T BUY!

[djf]

The specific gravity of gold is 19.3
The specific gravity of tungsten is 19.25

Close enough for government work, eh?

[Vendome]

 I meant pretty funny, if "Assay" so myself.

 

[Brilliant]

Impossible. Gold is a safe tangible physical asset that has never been worth nothing.

So it’s impossible to lose money... right?

[Politically Correct]

"Or they could have just weighed it." Really? You might want to check that. While it's true that just a simple weighing would not catch the fraud......There are easy ways to determine that it's not what it seems without sawing it in half.

[Ronin]

Buy gold in sheets less than a mm thick?

Or gold wire?

One thing is for sure. If there is a way to cheat, some crook will find it.

[reefdiver]

No kidding, More Gold is exchanged daily than exists, Gold will drop in value like a Euro when investors figure that one out

[ROLF of the HILL COUNTRY]

As the article says, tungsten is very close to gold in its weight to mass, therefore detection by weighing is very difficult.

A commenter on the site suggests:

I suggest a resistivity test after specific gravity test. A home based multimeter should be sufficient. Rough measurement of area of cross section and length is needed. Due to more than 100% difference between the resistivity tungsten and gold, the tungsten core should be too hard to detect. I believe there should be other method to test the magnetic field. Resistivities at 20 °C Material Resistivity (Ω•m) Tungsten 5.60 × 10-8 Gold 2.44 × 10^-8

[Fiddlstix]

Ping

[rwh]

So you are saying there is less actual supply than there is demand. And you say prices will drop when investors figure that out? How does that work?

[Lurker]

All of the metals I’ve ever traded for exist. I know that because it’s locked in my safe.

[Paladin2]

Weigh in water and weigh in air.

It's difficult to believe that this is the first time counterfeit bars have been passed. The densities have been unchanged for centuries, perhaps longer. Lab scales have been available for centuries.

[Anti-Bubba182]

Tungsten alloy for gold substitution

"..Notice: Chinatungsten Online (Xiamen) Manu.&Sales Corp. is a very professional and serious company, specializing in manufacturing and selling tungsten related products for more than two decades. Our gold-plated tungsten alloy products are only for souvenir and decoration purpose. Here we declare: Please do not use our gold-plated tungsten alloy products for illegal purpose..."

Sure Sure Yep Sure Yep Yep!!

[smokingfrog]

How much is that bar of tungsten worth? About $50?

[NVDave]

The reason why it hasn’t been done until recently is that tungsten melts at over 6,000F. It is a real bear to generate that kind of heat in sufficient densities to melt a half kilo to a full kilo of metal for casting. Most assay ovens heat to only about 2300 to 2400F. The natural physical problems of dealing with tungsten is what has held back the frauds for so long.