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. Shocking. Given the XRF couldn't detect it, I'd guess this practice is rampant; not many will go to the trouble of cutting a piece of gold (especially if the weight is right).
Testing kilo gold bar at home Kilo gold bar should weight 51.76 grams in water something you can verify easily with a scale as gold density is 19.32. (1000 / 19.32) If you buy such expensive large bars privately and still have any doubt worth to consider hammering a very thin but relatively long nail into the thinner side of the gold bar. Gold is very soft but tungsten is very hard and a fine nail will not go through tungsten. If the bar is genuine and the nail drives in without resistance the bar is pure gold and your local jeweller can fix the tiny hole in minutes without visible mark left afterwards.
Do not miss out on bargains as many scrap dealers pay only 40-50% gold value, but even this bar has 60-70% gold in it still 5 figure profit for shopping centre kiosk.
For those of us holding 100% tungsten, maybe we should get our tungsten bars checked out, as they may actually turn out to be gold.
99.98%, not 98%. XRF has a thickness limitation that's why I buy thin bars or coins if I am buying Gold.
I wonder whether the technique described is also applied to 30 kilo blocks. Most larger bars have these characteristic "solidifying lines" where you can literally see the pouring process. Maybe goldpelican can enlighten us: Are they really "baking" 1000Oz blocks that way, or is this only applied to 10Oz/Kilo bars?
I'm fairly sure that the Perth Mint (AGR) 1000oz blocks are cast from shot - others are poured though. Have one in the vault - maybe I should weigh it BHAS produces ~15kg bars in SA - they're all different weights.
Wonder what an ultrasonic thickness test of that tungsten filled 1kg bar would have turned up. XRF is looking less and less useful for testing large bars - the industry really needs to starting using a "two factor authentication" testing regime to weed out suspects. Not just XRF, but ultrasonic as well perhaps. If anyone in Australia ever encounters such a bar, I would love to have the opportunity to inspect it.
The 1000oz bars (typically) don't get made in the pizza oven because it's easier to do a "good enough" straight pour when the kinds of people buying 1000oz bars are happy to pay by the exact weight of the bar. Those buyers don't need it to be exactly 1000oz, so if it turns out weighing 994oz then they pay for 994oz.
On a side point, this sort of metal substitution would be magnitudes more difficult with a kilo coin than a kilo bar thanks to the milled edge. You could fake the milling but it would be more obvious that the coin has been tampered with.
Check out this thread man; you'll see that at least 3 of us have confessed to be sitting on tungsten piles. Personally I think gold is way over-rated.
Reminds me of that guy trying to talk-up bismuth bars on here not o long ago lol! This is really nothing new - its been going on since Roman times - just so happens that the overdue audit of Fort Knox/BoE/LBMA/HSBC vaults is always a tetchy subject. I wonder if the yanks gave Chavez & the Swiss gold or tungsten back then? Whatever the score I'm sure it'll be some organized crime gang - Sorry, I mean a different bunch of organized crims this time....
This is quite concerning what about clients who have purchased 1kg bars from ABC in the past, what surety is there that they are even real? It's interesting XRF machine could not even pick this up what does ABC use in Australia for testing? or other dealers for that matter. This will come as a obvious concern to clients who have purchased bars of this maker or pamp ect
"discovered in UK" It's a Metalor brand bar - not ABC. The information has been shared by ABC on their blog, that is all.
Absolutely this is nothing to do with ABC itself as they are simply reporting but i'm sure there's people in Australia who have purchased Metalor branded 1kg bars who are a little worried after seeing this. It's great that its been detected and gone global so other dealers can see clear pics of the methods used but how many out there have not yet been detected?
