Austalian bullion bealer ABC bullion has provided photographic evidence of a tungsten filled 1 kilo bar discovered this week. the bar passed a hand held xrf scan which showed 99.98% pure Au. the tungsten was only discovered when the bar was physically cut in half. After numerous reports of 4000z tungsten filled bars being discovered in hong Kong. this is the first documented evidence that has been made public. ....The bar appeared to be perfect other than it was 2 grams under weight. tungsten is not ferro-magnetic.The bar was supplied with the original certificate. After realizing the weight discrepancy had the bar cropped. He estimated 30%-40% was tungsten. from the silver doctors this is not good added not ferro-magnetic
I'm not so sure about "certificates" (also for collectors coins and such). When someone has enough criminal energy to counterfeit a bar or even a coin, what should prevent him from starting his ink-jet printer and printing some certificates? However, it might even have been an original one. Buying an original bar with certificate, drilling 500g of gold out of it and replacing it with tungsten, and selling the bar with the certificate and 500g of "scrap gold" may still seem like a good deal for those people.
"....The bar appeared to be perfect other than it was 2 grams under weight. tungsten is ferro-magnetic" Tungsten isn't magnetic. and Why didn't they drill a small hole thru first? and Couldn't the makers afford accurate scales?
Typically tungsten is rarely used by itself and is generally alloyed. So depends what is blended with the tungsten. For example my Tungsten Carbide router bits are "magnetic'.
Quote from ABC blog "ABC Bullion received the following email from one of our trusted suppliers this week. Note: It was not ABC Bullion that purchased this bar, the email and photos were sent to us as a general warning. I xxxx'ed out the city's name to avoid any second guessing as to the name of the dealer. 19/03/2012: Attached are photographs of a legitimate Metalor 1000gm Au bar that has been drilled out and filled with Tungsten (W). This bar was purchased by staff of a scrap dealer in xxxxx, UK yesterday. The bar appeared to be perfect other than the fact that it was 2gms underweight. It was checked by hand-held xrf and showed 99.98% Au. Being Tungsten, it would not be ferro-magnetic. The bar was supplied with the original certificate. The owner of the business that purchased the bar only became suspicious when he realized the weight discrepancy and had the bar cropped. He estimates between 30-40% of the weight of the bar to be Tungsten. This is very worrying and reinforces the lengths that people are willing to go to profit from the current high metal prices. Please be careful." http://ausbullion.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/tungsten-filled-gold-bars.html ............................................................................................................................................................................ My comment:Very hard to see how they could do this with thin coins or small thin bars.
Another post in this gold forum is "What is your preference when buying gold". This is another good reason to specialize in 1 oz gold coins, which is recommended by Doug Casey, and the vast majority of his gold is in 1 oz coins. Tungsten filling is generally in larger bars.
Most modern cast bars are made by weighing out shot and melting it in a mould - not by pouring - so 2 grams would be a huge discrepancy.
There is a Perth Mint video that shows this process. So why then do most 1000 oz silver bars vary in weight, often by many ozs?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/tungsten-filled-1-kilo-gold-bar-found-uk Wonder how many in Central banks storage looks like these?
wow... on the website it says, "Australian Bullion Dealer ABC Bullion has contacted SD to advise that one of its suppliers has provided them photographic evidence of a tungsten filled 1 kilo gold bar discovered this week." I wonder if any of the bullion dealers here on SS were also contacted?
I have checked, and unfortunately I'm holding mostly tungsten. What about you? Are you holding tungsten too?
Would have helped if they showed the ends of the bar, to see if any obvious tamper marks. Surely it would have required someone to drill, insert rods then seal the hole - Would have thought that would have been pretty evident.
2 grams underweight is HUGE, even in 1 kg bar if it was 2 grams over, i'd still be suspicious, and would get it checked properly, if anything is UNDERweight by even 1 gram i wouldn't touch it.- not even bother getting it checked, would just buy something else. bars are usually over by abit...never under are you paying for 1000gram of something or 9998grams?
Tungsten... Buy and hold!!! Oddly enough, Silvertongue has a lovely ring made of .999 tungsten... For realz...
Hi all, thanks for your discussion on my recent post. The warning email and pics were sent to ABC Bullion from MKS (PAMP refinery www.mks.ch). Not sure if the email was sent to other Australian dealers as ABC Bullion is the sole licensed importer of PAMP for Au, NZ. As per the comments above 2g is a huge difference. As a demonstration to myself I weight two 1kg ABC Bullion brand gold bars that had just arrived from the refinery last Friday and 1 weighed 1000.01g the other 1000.02g. Whilst we all would like to draw links (myself included) to grand schemes of high finance I suspect the bar in question was the product of a criminal gang. They most likely bought a real bar with certificate, clamped it in a drill press, drilled out 5 holes and pushed in tungsten rods. The hardest part would have been convincingly resealing the drilled end with melted gold from the drill holes. Whilst I suspect this was not a once off it would certainly be rare. As most gold bought back by dealers (and all bought by scrap dealers) ends up getting re-refined or sold to manufacturing jewelers, if there was a large number of such bars we would be hearing about it on a regular basis as the bars were melted down. Greg Hudson ABC Bullion www.abcbullion.com.au
