Tungsten Gold

[swissie]

As I gather, there are an increasing number of fake Gold-Bars in circulation consisting of Tungsten ( I believe that's the metals name) and only the visible surface actually is made of gold and to truly differentiate fake gold from real gold, one would have to take a sample from the inside of the bar and have it analyzed in a laboratory to make sure. (Drill a hole into the gold-bar ???)

Correct me, if I am wrong!

Assuming that in a worst-case scenario, one wanted to exchange gold for absolute essentials (like food). What if the buyer says something like " since I have no way of knowing whether you are offering me gold or tungsten-gold, I can only offer you 1 % of the current gold price". Wow!

I hope I stand corrected, otherwise I would have to look at gold as "a store of value" in a different way.

Cheers.

[Jack Mountain]

Suggestion, buy one bar in the 1st shop and try to sell it in the 2nd shop. Then you know....

[JeremyBowskill]

Stock up on Corned beef then. When the end of the world comes it will be more valuable than gold anyhow, and has a shelf life of 40 or 5o years.

[keeniau96]

Drill a hole in tungsten?!! Lottsa luck.

[canman]

Drill a hole in tungsten?!! Lottsa luck.

Good point, Tungsten is very much harder than gold, roughly 3 times harder and I would have thought easy enough to detect just by dropping the bar on a metal surface. A majority tunsten bar should have a definate ring to it.

[jbrain]

Stock up on Corned beef then. When the end of the world comes it will be more valuable than gold anyhow, and has a shelf life of 40 or 5o years.

Corned beef has a shelflife of 40-50 years ? Hmmm, must have a lot of goodies inside.

[NormanChomsky]

yeah be careful, a few years a go the american government produced a quantity of fake tungsten cored bars, thankfully the chinese government detected them when the US tried to ship them there

[Soutpeel]

yeah be careful, a few years a go the american government produced a quantity of fake tungsten cored bars, thankfully the chinese government detected them when the US tried to ship them there

tinfoil hat time me thinks

[JeremyBowskill]

Stock up on Corned beef then. When the end of the world comes it will be more valuable than gold anyhow, and has a shelf life of 40 or 5o years.

Corned beef has a shelflife of 40-50 years ? Hmmm, must have a lot of goodies inside.

Technically maybe not, I'm sure the best before date would be less than a couple of years. Remember back along though watching a documentary about a tin of corned beef that was left over form WW2. They opened it up at the end and munched it down, don't think anyone died............

[Replogle]

Plating tungsten with gold is almost not worth the trouble. Sure, large kilogram bars are easier to fake but the smaller ten, five and one baht golds are next to impossible to counterfeit. Reputable dealers with a visible storefront are common in Thailand.

Edited June 26, 2013 by Replogle

[CobraSnakeNecktie]

ultra sound. easy to detect defects. no holes required.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85OKVuV3wEg

[slapout]

There have been gold plated tungsten bars coming out of China and some suspect N. Korea for some time. When you have bar size that varies from 12.5 kg down to 500 gram, it seems to be worth while to the scammers.

Have no idea where the profit weight for a conterfitter would be, but 1 ounce coin may the the lower end. When you think of coin stamping, and electro plating mass production methods of today, it has got to be buyer beware market.

[swissie]

Stock up on Corned beef then. When the end of the world comes it will be more valuable than gold anyhow, and has a shelf life of 40 or 5o years.

At first, I thought this was meant as a humorous post. But on second thought, this is worth thinking about. In a worst case scenario, food and clean water would be the thing to own.

Folks, for the sake of it: What other food has a shelf-life of 40 to 50 years? Join in and give your ideas!

Cheers.

[Naam]

There have been gold plated tungsten bars coming out of China and some suspect N. Korea for some time. When you have bar size that varies from 12.5 kg down to 500 gram, it seems to be worth while to the scammers.

Have no idea where the profit weight for a conterfitter would be, but 1 ounce coin may the the lower end. When you think of coin stamping, and electro plating mass production methods of today, it has got to be buyer beware market.

check this!

http://www.tungsten-alloy.com/gold-plated-tungsten-alloy-bar.html

[swissie]

ultra sound. easy to detect defects. no holes required.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85OKVuV3wEg

I am sure, this is a good way to separate the real thing from a fake. But not within a worst case scenario. In such a situation, it may not be practical to drag a potential (doubting) gold-buyer to a place where ultra sound testing can be done. (Closed-down or no more electric power available to run the equipment.)

Cheers.

[JeremyBowskill]

Stock up on Corned beef then. When the end of the world comes it will be more valuable than gold anyhow, and has a shelf life of 40 or 5o years.

At first, I thought this was meant as a humorous post. But on second thought, this is worth thinking about. In a worst case scenario, food and clean water would be the thing to own.

Folks, for the sake of it: What other food has a shelf-life of 40 to 50 years? Join in and give your ideas!

Cheers.

Spam, powdered eggs vacuum packed, pickled foods and pretty much anything that has been dehydrated and vacuum packed. Although with that list I hope you have a gas mask in your bunker.

[CobraSnakeNecktie]

ultra sound. easy to detect defects. no holes required.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85OKVuV3wEg

I am sure, this is a good way to separate the real thing from a fake. But not within a worst case scenario. In such a situation, it may not be practical to drag a potential (doubting) gold-buyer to a place where ultra sound testing can be done. (Closed-down or no more electric power available to run the equipment.)

Cheers.

you could have a pretty crude 2 or 3 car battery array with an inverter and run that equipment.

Either a generator, vehicle or solar panels could top up the batteries.

[Markaew]

yeah be careful, a few years a go the american government produced a quantity of fake tungsten cored bars, thankfully the chinese government detected them when the US tried to ship them there

tinfoil hat time me thinks

Actually what NC said is true. The US tried to sell similar gold to another country which I don't recall and too lazy to look up.

[borovik]

Tungsten is hard,gold is soft(traditional test: on tooth!);

Gold is also easy to melt.- put it in proper stove and you will see hard core inside.

And - they have different color - only gold is golden.

It is easy to tell one from another.

What makes them similar?one thing only- the same specific gravity.

In practice - drilling is easy thing to do.

[borovik]

Another practical way is the same as done by Archmedes:scale and water.

Today high precision digital scale you can find in...stationary shop.

If you have real kilo bar,then just compare its weight AND volume with the bar in question.

[Naam]

ultra sound. easy to detect defects. no holes required.

I am sure, this is a good way to separate the real thing from a fake. But not within a worst case scenario. In such a situation, it may not be practical to drag a potential (doubting) gold-buyer to a place where ultra sound testing can be done. (Closed-down or no more electric power available to run the equipment.)

Cheers.

you could have a pretty crude 2 or 3 car battery array with an inverter and run that equipment.

Either a generator, vehicle or solar panels could top up the batteries.

yep! and you walk with 30 kilos of gear from one goldshop to another

to check whether the real thing is sold.

[worgeordie]

Stock up on Corned beef then. When the end of the world comes it will be more valuable than gold anyhow, and has a shelf life of 40 or 5o years.

At first, I thought this was meant as a humorous post. But on second thought, this is worth thinking about. In a worst case scenario, food and clean water would be the thing to own.

Folks, for the sake of it: What other food has a shelf-life of 40 to 50 years? Join in and give your ideas!

Cheers.

Any kind of Freeze-Dried foods,then vacuum pack, should see you through most disasters,light to carry,volume small,rehydrate and you have a meal, I was going to say nice, but it would keep you alive and well, as the Freeze-Drying only takes the water out. better to have some Freeze-Dried food ,than trying to carry 50 tins corned beef through the waste lands.

regards Worgeordie

[canman]

Stock up on Corned beef then. When the end of the world comes it will be more valuable than gold anyhow, and has a shelf life of 40 or 5o years.

At first, I thought this was meant as a humorous post. But on second thought, this is worth thinking about. In a worst case scenario, food and clean water would be the thing to own.

Folks, for the sake of it: What other food has a shelf-life of 40 to 50 years? Join in and give your ideas!

Cheers.

Honey

[CobraSnakeNecktie]

ultra sound. easy to detect defects. no holes required.

I am sure, this is a good way to separate the real thing from a fake. But not within a worst case scenario. In such a situation, it may not be practical to drag a potential (doubting) gold-buyer to a place where ultra sound testing can be done. (Closed-down or no more electric power available to run the equipment.)

Cheers.

you could have a pretty crude 2 or 3 car battery array with an inverter and run that equipment.

Either a generator, vehicle or solar panels could top up the batteries.

yep! and you walk with 30 kilos of gear from one goldshop to another

to check whether the real thing is sold.

well if the power is on then you just carry the ultra sound device in a briefcase or something.

I was responding to a "no electrical power" scenario

In that kind of scenario I could see an enterprising person offering to test other peoples gold.

The unit and battery could be transported in a wagon with wheels...

There are still wheels in this scenario right?

This kind of setup with a few batteries and inverter would be able to test a lot of gold.

If its just a couple of tests for personal buying and selling then a motorcycle battery and inverter in a backpack would do the job.

http://www.ebay.com/bhp/medical-equipment-ultrasound

Edited June 27, 2013 by CobraSnakeNecktie

[JeremyBowskill]

Corned beef all the way!! wouldn't touch gold with a barge pole yet............

[KRS1]

http://www.viewzone.com/fakegold.html

http://beforeitsnews.com/banksters/2012/09/chinese-discovered-fake-gold-bars-of-tungsten-in-2009-2431960.html

http://www.maxkeiseronfacebook.com/fake-gold-bars-tungsten.html

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-09-23/gold-counterfeiting-goes-viral-10-tungsten-filled-gold-bars-are-discovered-manhattan

Edited June 27, 2013 by KRS1

[buddy]

So does anybody actually know how to do a spot check of a 1 baht Thai gold bar to see if it genuine without lugging half a ton of instruments around?

[CobraSnakeNecktie]

So does anybody actually know how to do a spot check of a 1 baht Thai gold bar to see if it genuine without lugging half a ton of instruments around?

It's great question. Let's try to answer 7 ways.

http://moneymorning.com/2013/01/02/seven-ways-to-tell-if-your-gold-is-counterfeit/

[buddy]

Thanks for the information CobraSnakeNecktie, very informative.

[Soutpeel]

ultra sound. easy to detect defects. no holes required.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85OKVuV3wEg

I am sure, this is a good way to separate the real thing from a fake. But not within a worst case scenario. In such a situation, it may not be practical to drag a potential (doubting) gold-buyer to a place where ultra sound testing can be done. (Closed-down or no more electric power available to run the equipment.)

Cheers.

you could have a pretty crude 2 or 3 car battery array with an inverter and run that equipment.

Either a generator, vehicle or solar panels could top up the batteries.

The instrument shown is an industrial ultrasonic flaw detector used to check weld quality amongst other things, very portable about 5kg and battery operated...this particular model is German (Krautkramer)and about a US$ 12000 instrument, plus cost of probes and calibration blocks....what they are doing is doing material velocity measurements...draw back is you had better know how to set this instrument up properly

...as BS in BS out