Posted on 09/18/2012 7:08:59 PM PDT by Perdogg
It is one thing for tungsten-filled gold bars to appear in the UK, or in Germany: after all out of sight, and across the Atlantic, certainly must mean out of mind, and out of the safe. However, when a 10 ounce 999.9 gold bar bearing the stamp of the reputable Swiss Produits Artistiques Métaux Précieux (PAMP, with owner MTP) and a serial number (serial #038892, likely rehypothecated in at least 10 gold ETFs across the world but that's a different story), mysteriously emerges in the heart of the world's jewerly district located on 47th street in Manhattan, things get real quick. Moments ago, Myfoxny reported that a 10-ounce gold bar costing nearly $18,000 turned out to be a counterfeit. The discovery was made by the dealer Ibrahim Fadl, who bought the PAMP bar in question from a merchant who has sold him real gold before. "But he heard counterfeit gold bars were going around, so he drilled into several of his gold bars worth $100,000 and saw gray tungsten -- not gold. The bar was filled with tungsten, which weighs nearly the same as gold but costs just over a dollar an ounce."
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
lol.
Now THAT is inflation
on that Pawn Stars show someone came in with a gold brick and they drilled several holes and did the acid test to the shavings from inside.
It was real.
Goldfinger would pay you a visit.
The purpose of displacing the water is merely to obtain an accurate measurement of the irregularly shaped supposed gold bar's volume. The density of the object being measured doesn't matter, as long as it's fully immersed.
E.g., if the gold bar displaces 14.6888 cc of water, then it should weigh 283.49384 grams, or 10 oz. On, the other hand if it's 95% tungsten, it will only weigh about 282.796 grams. Gold is 19.30 g/cc, whereas tungsten is only 19.25 g/cc.
I suppose you could make it more interesting by mixing in some osmium, which is 22.59 g/cc, but, unlike tungsten, osmium is expensive. Back in high school, a kid I knew had got his hands on the coin sorting mechanism of a coke machine. He found that it worked based on the magnetic properties of the coins, as well as their size and weight. For instance, a quarter-sized slug punched out of a lead sheet went straight down the reject path. However, he found that if he glued on a small fleck of iron foil, the hybrid slug would work just fine.
It’s after the Great Fall...
The Provisional United States of South-East America?
Cuz, I’m getting a plumb job in the Provision Free Republic of Texas!
Loved the art work
Too bad it’s hollow ....
Correct, but I doubt that any facility that is worried about this problem would be unable to afford the $15K.
...and really only detect the surface of the metal under test."
Incorrect. X-rays penetrate quite nicely, in both directions. This isn't photoelectron spectroscopy, which "is" very depth limited. Yes, there "are" shielding effects based on atomic number of substrate, so penetration depth "is" better for lighter elements, but I would certainly expect mm's of penetration if not cm's. I suspect one can get charts from the mfg. with the requisite info.
"They are also a tad tricky to use."
Hardly. Correct interpretation of data requires some knowledge, but "use" is about a simple as it gets....hold it against the "target" and "pull/hold the trigger".
And yes, I've looked at the ubiquitous stories that all contain the statement "it passed a hand-held XRF test". One even claimed that XRF "..only penetrates the first 0.001 inch", which is complete BS. I suspect this was a completely untrained operator that was using it as a "magic box".
Pretty much. A scale and a graduated cylinder is all I need...
Bad when you cannot trust a gold bar
That would quickly show the problem, because tungsten is very much harder than gold, and a tool designed to shear gold would barf on the tungsten core. However, a low-frequency resistance measurement should also show up suspicious ingots.
I keep encouraging my wife to put up all the peaches she can. My best guess is they’ll be worth more than dollars and gold before it’s all over.
Perhaps full metal jacketed Pb.
Not tungsten covered with gold — any fluorescence from the tungsten would not get through the gold covering layer.
It’s worse than that. You rent me your house and I use it as collateral for a loan.
I always used a golden hammer on my knock-off wire wheels because of their weight, but after a couple of roadside tire changes, the hammers looked just bloody awful. Putting tungsten in them is a splendid idea!
This also a wickedly clever way to support tungsten prices after the beating they took when these mandatory new-fangled light bulbs replaced tungsten filaments.
Bravo, chaps!
Sounds like a 2 dollar brit term phony as they are.
Things have become far to clever.
Rehypothecation sounds like more BS from the usual sources.
Doesn’t matter if it is only a statistical risk, you roll the dice enough times it’ll come up snake eyes. If you’ve got the farm bet on that roll you lose it all not a probabilistic loss, a total loss. It is no longer statistical. They aren’t owed bailouts. Never have been and never should be.
The secret died with him in that tub.
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