Just curious.. i'm referring to perth mint/engelhard/etc silver bars. Cost cutting? Or is it due to volume? :/
The Banksters got upset because serialising bullion would mean they couldn't sell the same bar to 100 different people.
The guys making the bars wanted to shave some metal off and didn't want people to be able to trace it back to them later on what with numbers and shit.
Larger valued bars have serial numbers, i.e. 100oz, 5kg Silver+ and 10oz, 1/2kg Gold Bars+ Back in the late 70's to early 80's even a 10oz Silver Bar was considered a high value bar due to the Spot price of Gold/Silver in inflation adjusted terms When the Gold / Silver prices continue to rise then you will start to see more serial numbers on the smaller bars again
So I wonder if that means all our un-numbered perth mint bars that we have now will have a higher premium due to being un-marked and easier to slide under the radar?
I would hazard a guess that it is for a combination of reasons. If there isn't much demand for serialised bars then the manufacturers would be silly to add/keep that extra procedure and the associated cost in the production line. Our tax law also says that certain assets can be exchanged on a like-for-like basis, so where 10 shares in BHP are exactly the same as any other 10 shares in BHP, the same also applies to 10 ounces of a particular silver product being exactly the same as any other 10 ounces of the same kind of silver product. If you're using this system, there isn't any requirement to identify a particular bar so people don't bother. I suspect that serials were previously important for use within manufacturing industries and large financial institutions but Q&A and testing capabilities have improved so much in the last few decades that they're not really important now. I've seen new bars with QR codes laser-etched into them so there is obviously still some need for tracking, but QR codes would be much more efficient for that than serials anyway.
No but they will be worth more because our bars now don't have RFID in them, I guarantee you there will be some Bars that will come out with RFID in the packaging before this bull market is over
