Largest Private Refinery Discovers Gold-Plated Tungsten Bar
Recently, the German television station ProSieben ran a news story covering W. C. Heraeus in Hanau, Germany, the world’s largest privately owned refinery. In the story, Wilfried Hörner, the head of the gold foundry, shows a 500 gram bar (16.0755 troy ounces) received from an unidentified bank. The bar had the right physical dimensions to be an authentic gold bar, but one of the Heraeus employees suspected something funny. After the bar was cut in half, you can see that the inside is tungsten, with only a coating of gold on the outside.
You can watch this news story on You Tube, where it was posted February 28, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKczs-7BFRI.
Last fall, Rob Kirby of Kirby Analytics in Toronto reported that China’s central bank had discovered some 400-ounce gold-plated tungsten bars among those it had recently received from bonded warehouses. It was later learned that at least four counterfeit bars were found and that all had come from sources in the United States. As suspicions grow about counterfeit bars among those held in bonded warehouses for delivery against either COMEX or London Bullion Market Association contracts or shares of exchange traded funds, investors could panic. So, you can understand that there has been almost a total blackout on news coverage on this story.
Tungsten is the only lower value metal that has a specific density close enough to gold to fabricate passable counterfeit pieces of the same size and weight as genuine coins and ingots. Over the years, there have been a few isolated reports of smaller coins and bars found to have been drilled to remove some of the gold which was replaced with tungsten. However, it is far more profitable to fabricate larger original bars of tungsten that are then gold-plated.
Thus far, the commodity exchanges have disclaimed of any responsibility for the purity of the gold bars they are delivering against contracts. As stories of gold-plated tungsten bars in bonded warehouses continue to appear, I expect the commodity exchanges are going to be forced to modify their business practices to provide a guaranty of purity for any bars they deliver.
The process of non-destructive testing of bars to check for counterfeits involves very expensive equipment and is time consuming. It is beyond the means of almost all investors and coin dealers. For maximize safety, I recommend purchasing only smaller size coins and ingots, say two ounces of gold content or less, and only deal with a company that has a lengthy track record and in-house staff expertise (unlike the bank that took in this counterfeit 500 gram bar). If you have purchased coins and ingots from unknown sources, you may want have them checked out by an experienced independent third party.
In contrast, the last things I would want to invest in are large gold bars stored in bonded warehouses in unallocated storage. If it turns out that the warehouse holding your bars has too many counterfeit bars in their inventory, it could go bankrupt. That would leave holders of unallocated inventory as unsecured creditors of the bankrupt company, and not as owners of gold.
Because the existence of counterfeit gold-plated tungsten bars could have such a huge impact on the financial markets, there is a huge potential for deception and misinformation to be passed around. Be very careful about automatically believing any story you may hear. For your own protection, it would be better to take physical possession of the smaller sizes of gold coins and bars now, and know that what you own genuine solid gold.
Patrick A. Heller owns Liberty Coin Service in Lansing, Michigan and writes "Liberty's Outlook," a monthly newsletter covering rare coins and precious metals. Past issues can be found online at http://www.libertycoinservice.com/ Pat Heller is also the gold market commentator for Numismatic News. Past columns online at http://numismaster.com/
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I suggest a resistivity test after specific gravity test. A home based multimeter should be sufficient.
Rough measurement of area of cross section and length is needed.
Due to more than 100% difference between the resistivity tungten and gold, the tungsten core should be too hard to detect.
I believe there should be other method to test the magnetic field.
Resistivities at 20 °C
Material Resistivity (Ω•m)
Tungsten 5.60 × 10-8
Gold 2.44 × 10^-8
This normally happens to African banks where they are basically sitting on fake glitter. I don’t know the markets who sell these fakes, but they do exist and had been operating for decades.
So buying a small coin is a better idea? They can be just as easily faked as the bigger bars are. Actually, it would be easier with the smaller furnace etc.
I love hearing the ’send us your gold jewelry’ commercials. I imagine the return letter will always tell you that you only had ‘plated jewelry’. NEVER send away your property to people you never met, do business in person and with a business address you can go to and take your revenge out with their blood. THAT is the only way to keep them honest, real life ending threats if they decide to swindle you.
this is sooooooo much bigger that you think …
we are talking tons upon tons upon tons of these bars going out from the most major banks in the world in country’s like India and China , it will all go down soon , be patient my friends , the end of the monetary system is near
Funny nobody talking about who is doing this? I know who. The usual tribe thats who.
Tungsten will over time expand and contract that opening cracks in the gold plating. This is likely another scare tactic from the “tribe” to keep the Goy in worthless paper assets.
last year the Germans and two or three other countries were demanding the return of their gold that held here in the United States and the people holding it refuse to do so to this date. I think we well start seeing very rich people showing up dead in odd places.
What’s sad is that we live in such a fantasy world that it’s impossible to know the truth.
1. This could be a straight forward recent criminal forging.
2. This could have been standard practise by the big gold shorts for years: JP Morgan Case springs to mind.
2. This story could be a hoax by
a. The Federal reserve to lower the price of gold as an inflation/dollar weakness indicator.
b. The villains in 2. above.
c. Parties unknown
But one wouldn’t want to be a conspiracy theorist, right?
Frankie’s right,same tribe,same tricks-who else would have access to the bullion banks?
I would bet a ounce of gold that the gold that was removed from the 400 oz bars is sitting in the same country that Bernie Madoff’s money went to(that the media won’t discuss),it begins with an “I” and I don’t mean India or Iran!
why do you think the media is pushing commercials to buy buy buy buy gold. drive the price up up up now leak out the stories about phony gold bars cause a panic …short gold stock shares now then get the goyim comming and going and make money both ways!!!
the same trusted sucker tactics work with stocks as well as precious metals the only ones who will make the big bucks are the ones that are the ones with the inside info!!!!!
Ruthless!!!!!! The guy that owns Hays City Gold & Silver in Hays, Kansas is an extremely rude person! Do Not waste your time! I will never go there again and I will tell everyone I know to stay away!
Hays City Gold & Silver in Hays, Kansas is ripping people off with fraudulently over-priced collectible gold coins. Some people have had almost their entire life savings wiped out by that guy! Stay away from him!!!!!!!!!
So if you are a bank and you come across one or some of these bars, do you call up the authorities and make a big deal out of it, or do you try to find the next sucker to palm it off on? I have a feeling these fake bars and bricks have been circulating for some time, and probably originated here in the U.S., since there is no legitimate suditing on anything the Federal government chooses to own. Fort Knox may as well be called the brick SH house for all the legitimate gold that place houses. We the people have been fleeced of everything else, why not that too, and why not a long time ago?
All thats need to test these bars is a really strong Magnet magnet will not stick to gold but it will to tungsten.
It’s nothing a band saw at the teller’s window won’t fix.
dumb, they are trying to get us to distrust gold.
Gold and silver were the only things we were supposed to have in our currency according to the US constitution.
This has been hyped beyond reality by to many already
http://seekingalpha.com/article/191888-fake-tungsten-gold-story-pushing-gold-investors-to-buy-gold-etfs
If the number of fake bars is great enough to de-stabilize markets, it means that is nowhere near as much gold on hand as thought. This will cause the value of gold to increase comensurately, because of course the available supply will be much less than reported holdings. The price of the metals or any commodity is tied to the supply available.
I want one with chocolate in the middle and a cherry in it. They got lots of them at the grocery store.(but no cherry) Yummy.
Big story about Gold-Plated Tungsten Bar, but fake paper gold that 80 time over sold is not fake just a super big scam!! Make Madoff look as child play!! And people still buying it!! Good luck
Tungsten is slightly magnetic, gold is not. i don’t understand the need for “very expensive equipment”.
I don’t understand the statement that equipment needed to detect fake bars is too expensive! Anyone with any NDT experience would realize that these fakes could be detected in a few seconds with equipment costing only a few hundred dollars. Balance that against the value of only one fake 500g bar! The equipment needed is simple ultrasonic inspection equipment available used for under $1000.
The only equipment you need is a scale. a 500 gram bar would be off in weight by about 0.2% or tenths of a gram; not exactly expensive to measure.
Well, I don’t know many private individuals buying or selling 100 oz or 1,000 oz gold bars. That said it only leaves the largest of criminal elements, GOVERNMENTS!
Also, a great argument for buying “junk” silver coins, instead of gold.
“It was later learned that at least four counterfeit bars were found and that all had come from sources in the United States.”
I’d be interested in knowing WHAT sources within the USA these fake bars came from.
TRUE STORY: A very POPULAR source of consumer gold (rhymes with CON-EX) used to send out BRASS coins instead of the 24K coins which customers had paid for. For those who were intelligent enough to discover the error, the “company” made it right after many months of fighting. For BIG buyers who frequent the company, how often do they go over all their purchases? How many “brass gold coins” are still in circulation?
Makes me wonder if CON-EX has graduated to bigger and better scams.
BTW, these a-holes are still in BIG business and still ripping people off with “derivatives”… Lots of TV ads…
DON’T DO BUSINESS WITH THESE SCUMBAGS!
Yup, an orchestrated destruction of the economy. On they march.
Question: If the full scale of this scandal is blown wide open will the price of Gold go down or up? Perhaps Tungsten filled bars are still a bargain. At least you will have some real stuff that ought to at least increase in value in proportion to what was missing. I suppose what I am saying is that there is a premium to be paid for unvalidated Gold. If proper validation ever takes place then perhaps your premium will be covered. Another way to look at it is that you have bought the now hidden true value of Gold inspite of getting some free tungsten. or plainly put the world dose not care a great deal for tungsten. Just a thought.
@Ralph Tice “The only equipment you need is a scale. a 500 gram bar would be off in weight by about 0.2% or tenths of a gram; not exactly expensive to measure.”
I don’t get it. Sounds to me like “which is heavier: 500g of gold or 500g of tungsten?”
A typical electronic service ohmmeter won’t do the trick.. Gold, silver, copper, tungsten, platinum one ounce bars would all measure 0 ohms with my unit.. This resistance method is looking expensive.
An ultrasonic thickness gauge will pick up tungsten inside gold.
The speed of sound in gold is about 40% of the speed of sound in tungsten, thus, a discontinuity will be seen if there is a piece of tungsten inside a gold bar. The instruments are made by Olympus and other companies. Calorimetry will also work,due to the heat conductivity difference between the two metals, but it is slower.
i was incorrect that all tungsten is slightly magenetic. there are 4 or five classes of tunsten, two of which are magnetically “NIL”.-NOT MAGNETIC AT ALL.
Specific Gravity & Weight Per Cubic Foot:
Gold, pure 24Kt 19.29 – 1204
Tungsten 19.62 – 1224
“‘400’ oz (‘12.5’ kg) bar
There are only 55 active manufacturers worldwide whose ‘400 oz’ (‘12.5 kg’) bars are accepted internationally as London Good Delivery.
‘400 oz’ London Good Delivery bars are permitted to weigh between 350 oz and 430 oz. Minimum gold purity: 99.5%. Around 150,000 are made each year. Central banks normally hold gold in the form of these bars and are believed to hold 2.5 million of them”. -source- http://www.gold.org/assets/file/pr_archive/html/bars/Categ.htm
So, maybe the dude is correct about “very expensive equipment”.
who cares anyway? who the hell can afford much more than an ounce or two the way things are. just buy more ammo.
Now you know why Royal Canadian Mint miss gold goes, after received back lease gold!!
there is an item on the web giving details re the odd mystery of Fort Knox the us traders and a LOT of gold plated tungsten, it was hushed up, but it appears to be correct. a certain commodity dealer took an unexplained absence..after an inhouse investigation.
The usual suspects and the usual hiding place: Tel Aviv.
TUNGSTON
So buying a small coin is a better idea? They can be just as easily faked as the bigger bars are. Actually, it would be easier with the smaller furnace etc.
Not really. Working with tungsten is hardly trivial – the melting point is 6192 F (vice 1947 F for gold) and the stuff is pretty hard… it’s been used to make anti-tank armor piercing shells, for pity’s sake!
Also, consider that to make a really good fake that won’t be detected by simply nicking the metal, you need probably a 1/8″ thick layer of gold around the tungsten core. Obviously that makes 1 oz and smaller coins rather immune to this – but a large bar would be much harder to deal with. Also the tolerances on coins vs. bars is probably much tighter. Finally, trying to stamp coin type details into tungsten can’t be a trivial task. Food for thought.
If you can’t choose between investing in gold or paper then invest in guns, ammunition, alcohol and food…
I can’t remember the last time those commodities dropped in value…
Go to Survivalblog dot com and invest in something -real-. You can’t protect your future with gold or paper alone…
Quote, “i was incorrect that all tungsten is slightly magenetic. there are 4 or five classes of tunsten, two of which are magnetically “NIL”.-NOT MAGNETIC AT ALL.”
Carl, Please explain this. Tungsten is an element, a pure metal, not an alloy. So what do you mean by classes? And yes Tungsten is ferromagnetic meaning that it is naturally magnetic. But also maybe with certain small additions of alloying elements which would have negligible effect on density you could nil the ferromagnetism. I will research this.
The small difference between density of Gold and Tungsten makes it impractical to measure the dimensions and compute the volume on a bar that will have a slight radius on one or more of its edges. The only way to get an accurate volumetric measurement would be to immerse the bar endwise into a plexiglass tube filled with water to achieve maximum vertical differential in height of water column. Now you will need a powerful magnifying glass because the difference in height of the water column will be about 0.010″ (0.254 mm)because the Gold is only about 0.1% difference in density from Tungsten based on the Metals Handbook data. But first you would need a REAL bar of gold and be able to measure its volume THEN cut it to see if it is really Gold or plated Tungsten or use the $1,000 ultrasound suggested.
Now try the density test on a LITTLE coin. OK it will work if you have an analytical balance that measures in milligrams. Not be cheap.
My advice? Don’t buy Gold — buy ammo and I am a pacifist but my pacifism ends when it comes to protecting family and freinds.
Nick from ShareLynx Gold passed on to me a few days ago the following from the producers of the video (all personal info was removed by him before forwarding):
vielen Dank für Ihre Anfrage.
MANY THANKS FOR YOUR ENQUIRY
Das Video ist tatsächlich bei Argor in der Schweiz aufgenommen worden, allerdings in einem ganz anderen Zusammenhang.
THE VIDEO WAS EFFECTIVELY TAKEN AT ARGOR IN SWITZERLAND, ALTHOUGH IN A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CONTEXT
Unten eine englischsprachige Erklärung hierzu, die Ihnen einige weitere Hintergrundinformationen gibt. Der Barren wurde übrigens schon vor über 10 Jahren bei Argor zum Einschmelzen abgegeben; sofort entdeckt und aus dem Verkehr gezogen. Gefälschte Barren kommen extrem selten vor, unsere Kollegen in den Schmelzen können sich an keinen Fall in den letzten Jahren erinnern, in denen ein solcher bei Heraeus zur Aufarbeitung eingeliefert wurde.
BELOW AN EXPLANATION IN ENGLISH TO THIS ISSUE, THAT WILL GIVE YOU SOME FURTHER BACKGROUND INFORMATION. THE BARS, BY THE WAY, WERE DELIVERED TO ARGOR ALREADY MORE THAN TEN YEARS AGO FOR SMELTING; WERE IMMEDIATELY DISCOVERED AND WITHDRAWN FROM CIRCULATION. COUNTERFEIT BARS ARE EXTREMELY RARE, OUR COLLEAGUES FROM THE FOUNDRY CANNOT RECALL A SINGLE INSTANCE IN THE LAST YEARS IN WHICH SUCH A BAR WAS DELIVERED TO HERAEUS FOR PROCESSING.
Statement:
The video shown on http://www.youtube.com is an extract from the weekly German television broadcast Galileo that discusses scientific topics. This particular broadcast covered the topic of gold including testing the purity of gold bars.
The presentation of the scene of (gold) production at the Argor Heraeus refinery – that was put on youtube.com in another context – when seen together with the text could therefore give an incorrect impression.
The false bar shown in the broadcast was a bar not produced by Heraeus; it was sent to the company for refining and detected already at the time of delivery. Compliance Management at Argor-Heraeus is very important and plays an important role at the company. Among others, it has very stringent rules for handling and dealing with precious metals.
Therefore, and combined also with strong and effective quality controls, Argor-Heraeus is able to assure the authenticity of gold bars produced by the company itself at all times.
Internet: http://www.heraeus-edelmetallhandel.de
Heraeus Metallhandelsgesellschaft mbH
Heraeusstr. 12-14, 63450 Hanau, Germany
So the video is about ten year old fake bars. Another example of commentators jumping the gun and hyping a story without any fact/background checking. To be fair, it really is only someone like Nick who has a worldwide well-connected subscriber base who can do that sort of checking.
You can test for fake bars without having to damage the bar with ultrasonic testers. Below is a quote the Perth Mint received from a supplier of them:
“The 1090 Flaw Detector allows you to look into the Bar for voids/defects as well as UT velocity which is determined the products elastic modulus i.e Tungsten Velocity is 5183-5460m/sec and Gold is 3,240m/sec. For example if you calibrate for Au then the testing Tungsten bar of the same thickness, the UT thickness would read approximately half the actual because of the speeding-up of the sound through the Tungsten.”
There is a way to get around this, although it is impractical for those who want only to buy gold at near its bullion value. The solution is simple, if you’re not obsessed with getting gold at close to its bullion value. I buy old gold coins. Mostly US gold before 1933, but some others, such as Russian 10 rubles, German 20 marks. I have two advantages, of course. I have been a professional numismatist for 35 years and can easily spot a fake or a genuine coin that has been manipulated. Also, I work for Heritage, the biggest wholesaler of old US gold coins in the country, and get whatever I want at wholesale. I can’t pay below wholesale, but I can pick out what I want out of the biggest inventory in the country. But even for non-employees, Heritage has been in this business for well over 30 years, has the best experts and rock-solid guarantees. Not to toot our own horn (and anyway, we don’t do retail of small quantities to the public), but deal with someone who not only knows what they’re doing, but has been around for a long time, and stands to be around for a long time to come, and you should be OK. Old coins are far more difficult to manipulate, and are not cost-effective for someone with a lot of tungsten but lacking the artistry to convincingly imitate 19th century minting techniques. We know the fine aspects of each mint that made US gold coins in the 1890s, and can tell you the mintmark on the back by looking at the obverse (front) of the coin. To be able to duplicate all four major mints would require a bigger expense outlay than any counterfeiter to date has been willing to spend. The older coins cost a premium of course. It’s up to you to decide whether or not your security is worth it.
I you are buying Gold coins and not an expert like Mark Emory, or if you are buying bullion you had best invest in an UT. Also the test would need to be made in the presence of buyer and seller.
You might find this link of interest:
http://www.eng-tips.com/threadminder.cfm?pid=330
then click on this thread: Tungsten magnetism
On the two or three times Congresssent a group to look at the ars at Fort Knox they looked at one or two bars (one or two bars of what?) no tests were made, no bar count was made everyone assumed that any one stack of gold looking bars were all gold and backed tightly instead of possibly surrounding a hollow center.
No tests have ever been made. Who knows how much gold is there? If any?
lol, there called troy onces, doesnt that alone give you a clue.
lol, oops fail typo, muhahha
Fight back
Google: ultrasonic gold Pamp
Start now.
Best for all.
Hells bells just buy paper gold and you don’t have to worry about tugsten… suckers.
The moduli are different, therefore the speed of sound would be wrong. Also ultrasound would detect the boundaries between the gold and the tungsten.