Ha. So I searched with the first phrases, and there are multiple results that are identical. But then there's this :"In theory, as its density is 19.1g/cm3, which is approximately 70% denser than lead, uranium could be used as material of making fake coin. However, it is weakly radioactive and not as dense as gold, so it does not appear to be a practical method. Then people have discovered that tungsten is environmental-friendly, durable and hardness, the most important is that its density of 19.25g/cm3 is just about the same density as gold (19.3g/cm3), which bears the similar specific gravity."
So I guess someone copy pasted a mistake that someone did when shortening the original version.
The expensive part here is the 1/16 inch gold around the tungsten to fool x-ray scanners, they say that's enough to prevent x-rays from reaching the tungsten.
That is an obvious typo. The intention must have been to write "uranium" everywhere in that paragraph, instead of "tungsten".
Uranium and tungsten are the 2 metals which have about the same density as gold, so they can be used to fake gold. The only alternative would be to use alloys of rhenium, osmium, iridium or platinum (or also neptunium, but that is too expensive and too radioactive), but that would be pointless because such alloys would be too expensive.
Nevertheless, when I have read the paragraph for the first time, I have not spotted the error, because it is also true that tungsten is weakly radioactive.
The majority of the chemical elements heavier than the rare-earth elements, with a few exceptions (lead, gold, mercury and iridium) are weakly radioactive, but their radioactivity is several orders of magnitude lower than that of thorium and uranium.
I think it's so interesting for people because so much of our concept of reality and how the world works is down to our experience. Then you encounter something contrary to that experience and it kind of forces you to realize, evem for just a minute that your understanding is largely a connecting of the dots of your own limited sampling of a much larger thing.
To identify a gold-plated object, those would have to be done in a destructive manner, i.e. after scratching the object.
In many cases that would not be acceptable, so non-destructive tests may be used, e.g. based on density or X-ray absorption, but those are inconclusive, because tungsten also passes them.
When scratching the object is allowed, then there is little need for a complex test, as the change of color would be enough to show a fake.
Product description tells us that the gold plating is 1/16" thick (~1.6 mm), and that such thick plating of gold is necessary to fool x-ray testing. I don't know how invasive scratch tests are but I imagine the carving to be shallower than 1.6 mm. Their product is clearly and thoroughly designed for counterfeiting.
It is clearly designed for counterfeiting. If your concern and interests are truly limited to trade shows, I’m sure an ingot of steel painted gold would suffice.
"only for souvenir and decoration purpose. ... Please do not use our gold-plated tungsten alloy bar and tungsten alloy golden bar for any illegal purpose."
ya, sure, that's why you make them so they pass chemical tests, x-rays, etc, etc.
In multiple transactions, and they called him and asked whether he had more of it. (“Das Geldinstitut soll ihn sogar zwischendurch angerufen und gefragt haben, ob er nicht noch mehr habe.”)
That makes it look like and inside job to me. Alternatively, they must have paid significantly below market value.
Haha exactly. I have a 1oz gold coin 9999 fine and me and the few people who held it had the same reaction. Whoa that’s heavier than I expected! Anyway as I was saying…
Still waiting for someone to have a religious experience with it
I bought a cube of tungsten and a cube of magnesium to teach my kids about density, and I was really surprised how dangerous it feels just to hold the tungsten. I only let them hold it a few inches above a table because that thing would break your foot if you dropped it! If you hold the magnesium and drop it one inch you get a delicate little “clop” and if you drop the tungsten one inch you get a solid “BANG”.
I got one of those sets too and was wondering how the heck they manage to cast a tungsten cube given how high the melting point is. But it turns out the actual process uses sintering. (At least for this super inexpensive set we bought)
Bars are unpopular among gold bullion.. hoarders for this exact reason. People generally only buy factory sealed and assayed bars but most prefer government minted coins. They are very intricate and quite thin so not really possible to fake. Plus they are usually technically legal currency so counterfeiting them is very serious.
US gold eagle, Canadian Maple, Australian Kangaroo, Austrian Philharmonic. I’d recommend anyone with a little interest in physical assets to grab one as they’re beautiful pieces and tend to hold their value over centuries
Fascinating! I’ve never seen the point of owning gold and have wondered why people would buy gold coins (or why they sell simply for the price of the underlying content) rather than just buying plain old bars of whatever size.
I still don’t understand why people buy gold but at least I now see why it’s sensible to buy coins.
My mum married draped in gold jewelry which was too soft to be worn again. I’ve seen the photos and saw the gold as a kid in their safe deposit box, where it’s sat for 60 years. Given that she moved to the west, what was the point?
The reason to own gold is that there is no counter party risk. It can also help transfer wealth between incompatible systems. If there is a currency reset, lost war, or you end up a refugee - Gold is a great option.
That’s assuming gold keeps its value in that sort of event! Not that I think that’s unlikely, since we have a long history of lusting after gold and generally appreciating shiny things… but given the metal itself has relatively little utility, it’s like an other currency in that it ultimately relies on people perceiving it as valuable for it to actually be, well, valuable!
I can’t really think of anything that would have a better chance in a WW3 scenario for example. Any currency could get devalued to heck due to war killing their economy, crypto needs a global trustworthy internet and a China/U.S. could launch a cyber attack on the local chain, etc.
Maybe potato seedlings or canned meat will be more reliable
Yeah definitely… outside of like, things that do stuff (seeds, medicine, etc.) gold probably has the best chance of still being worth something in almost any scenario! And it’s very dense value-wise and easy to store, which can’t be said for the others!
Sure, but there are plenty of plausible futures where the currency of one country, even a major country like China or the USA, has their currency completely devalued, and semiconductor fabs keep working.
Oooh yeah definitely, no argument from me there. I’m more stating that it doesn’t have much utility in a huge catastrophe where we can’t make microchips.
Many people have many reasons. Lots of prepper types. Personally I just think it’s cool and fun. Much more satisfying than just seeing a number go up on a website. It’s very cumbersome and dangerous to have a lot of gold though. There isn’t a great solution to storing it. Even a safety deposit box at a bank isn’t insured to more than I believe $200 of precious metals. So if the bank burns or floods or the feds seize it or it goes bankrupt then you probably won’t see that box again. I wouldn’t buy more because of that and also since it’s physical there are a lot of fees - shipping, insuring, storing, mining-refining-minting cost, fees from sellers, low ball offers when you sell yourself, etc. Big headache for larger amounts. But having a few thousand dollars in that form is neat. And it’s a bit of a hedge against any bad event - you can put a few in your pocket and land in any major city in the world and cash it in immediately.
Plus there are not really any other things that have held significant value for thousands of years. Other than perishables - so great for time traveling too
you make it sound like they were trying to rip the chinese gov off.
the difference was 99.99 to 99.999 and it was a small number out of a large shipment and it was clearly and accident.
Its also taking the chinese gov on good faith as they wont ship it back for testing (china buys a lot of gold, and hoards it, its against the law to ship gold out of the country).
as the WA Premier said.. its a f*** storm in a teacup
As stated in the article, the Perth Mint's original deal with Shanghai Gold had included Shanghai Gold testing the gold to make sure it met the 99.999% standard of Shanghai Gold as part of signing the contract. After that point, Perth Mint intentionally chose to dope the gold they were delivering down to 99.99% in order to save ~$670,000. This wasn't them switching to a cheaper process or less pure source material - they had an actual employee go into their gold supplies and dope them with lesser metals in order to save money. As soon as Shanghai Gold complained and they realised it had been detected, said employee stopped doping the gold that same day - this wasn't a dispute over standards, them stopping as soon as they were discovered shows they knew they were in the wrong. This was, very clearly, not an accident. It was also not a "small number", it was $8.7 billion dollars worth of gold that will need to be recalled. We also don't need to take the "chinese gov" on good faith, Perth Mint tested it themselves and found non-compliance. They then attempted a cover-up, reporting separate findings of compliance to Shanghai Gold and intentionally withholding their own testing that had found non-compliance.
This isn't a storm in a teacup, it's high level corruption in nearly $9Bn worth of trade. The fact that China is the victim really shouldn't factor into it, should it? It's also a bit rich of the WA Premier, as good as he can be on some other issues, to say that this particular issue is a storm in a teacup when he used to run the Perth Mint and may be personally implicated in any finding of corruption.
Maybe a Differential Thermal Analysis/Thermomechanical Analysia? I suspect gold and tungsten have different behaviours when heated, and that should tell both apart.
They have different magnetic susceptibilities. Gold is diamagnetic (repelled by magnetism); tungsten is paramagnetic (attracted). A strong magnetic field (neodymium magnets) and sensitive scales can tell them apart. I built a small rig a few years ago with parts from Aliexpress that worked for coins and for bars it's just scaling it up.
does this youtuber/tiktoker have their arms up in the air and their eyes popping out of their head and affiliate links below? i have handled tungsten, it's cool, but not dissimilar to handling weights for working out
Yes but if it's a fair price there's every chance he'll buy from some other guy selling the real deal.
Now if you definitely (and you're taking a risk with the shenanigans you need to go through to get/setup this fake item so you want to get paid) want to sell it you need to undercut the fair price. How can you explain a low price? Well, the easy way is to convince the mark that either the two of you are in on a scam together or that the mark is the con.
Personally I don't really agree with that statement, "You can't fool an honest man." but I can see the logic that drives it. Generally it seems like the honest people who get scammed are the ones who are trying to help someone which makes the people running these scams see even more pathetic.
It's always fun to read about tungsten, I guess with the high density and weird texture the literal meaning in Swedish makes sense: tung=heavy and sten=rock so heavy rock. :)
Can't quite call it life changing, but I bought a smaller cube as a Christmas present (half joking, half novelty. Dumb shit you buy your brother type stuff.).
Well, when it arrived the joke was on me because it was genuinely such an interesting object. I regretted having to give it away.
Then for some reason, by the time I got around to buying myself one, they'd become a "cool" thing online and the price exploded. Oh well.
finding that amount of gold bars is incredibly hard. People usually respond "comex & london" has gold bars? I dare say 30% are fake, numerous occasions where gold bars stored in the vault are fake.
In light of this week’s banking collapse precipitated by (among other things) lost confidence, I’ll ask:
To what extent does it matter that some of the bars in the vault are fake if everyone has confidence they’re real?
Also it seems like anyone who might inadvertently acquired some in lieu of the real thing & suspect the fraud down the line, they really have little incentive to cut the bar in half to find out. Best not to know.
At some point someone will need to melt it down to use for industry, or for another purpose, or form. Say a comex bar, or smaller bars, or for alloying, whatever.
Anyone who thinks they might be that person, or thinks they might sell to that person, certainly cares! They’re the ones who will suffer the consequences of the fraud.
Fort Knox is audited regularly, and in 1974 cogress sent a delegation to verify it. One can easily imagine nefarious actors siphoning some off; how many tungsten bars are in there? They’d have to test every bar to know for sure. Has this been done?
There are some great historical nuggets in that archive, I liked this appeal to people to stop hoarding pennies and get them back into circulation.
> Creating a shortage where it does not exist can adversely affect every public spirited citizen, taxpayer and conservator of the earth’s resources. It is inflationary should merchants start to round off sales to the next nickel due to lack of pennies to make change.
> Again, I’d like to emphasize. There are plenty of pennies. But they are in the wrong places.
> It is estimated that over 30 billion pennies are in circulation—doing the job for which they were intended. Somewhere in this vast country of ours, however, in excess of 30 billion pennies are in hiding. These are the pennies I’m looking for. They are in dresser drawers, shoe boxes, pickle jars; most anyplace you can think of that will get them out of pocket and out of sight. They are unwanted, unused and unappreciated.
I have to laugh though - it would be trivial for someone in the executive hierarchy there to walk off with them and cover it up. The whole thing is intentionally opaque.
And even better - that gold was mostly gold seized by the gov’t from private citizens when private ownership of gold was banned and all circulating coinage and other gold was seized!
It truly is an attractive nuisance for the corrupt.
Long time reader but first time poster, had to share a story.
A decade ago was riding a bus in China, and they had a PSA type ad playing on the screens (paraphrased) "making sure when you're buying gold you distinguish investment (real) gold bars and decorative (fake) gold bars".
I thought "wow, how bad of a problem it must be to need such a PSA".
94 comments
[ 434 ms ] story [ 5761 ms ] threadhttp://news.chinatungsten.com/en/tungsten-dart-news/46-tungs...
Uranium and tungsten are the 2 metals which have about the same density as gold, so they can be used to fake gold. The only alternative would be to use alloys of rhenium, osmium, iridium or platinum (or also neptunium, but that is too expensive and too radioactive), but that would be pointless because such alloys would be too expensive.
Nevertheless, when I have read the paragraph for the first time, I have not spotted the error, because it is also true that tungsten is weakly radioactive.
The majority of the chemical elements heavier than the rare-earth elements, with a few exceptions (lead, gold, mercury and iridium) are weakly radioactive, but their radioactivity is several orders of magnitude lower than that of thorium and uranium.
This video gives me a similar vibe. https://youtu.be/Pp9Yax8UNoM
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/shanghai-gold-exchange-denie...
In many cases that would not be acceptable, so non-destructive tests may be used, e.g. based on density or X-ray absorption, but those are inconclusive, because tungsten also passes them.
When scratching the object is allowed, then there is little need for a complex test, as the change of color would be enough to show a fake.
ya, sure, that's why you make them so they pass chemical tests, x-rays, etc, etc.
That makes it look like and inside job to me. Alternatively, they must have paid significantly below market value.
Still waiting for someone to have a religious experience with it
US gold eagle, Canadian Maple, Australian Kangaroo, Austrian Philharmonic. I’d recommend anyone with a little interest in physical assets to grab one as they’re beautiful pieces and tend to hold their value over centuries
There are starting to be tungsten cored fake coins good enough to fool most, so validation is still required.
[https://m.alibaba.com/product/60579932545/Gold-Plated-Tungst...]
I still don’t understand why people buy gold but at least I now see why it’s sensible to buy coins.
My mum married draped in gold jewelry which was too soft to be worn again. I’ve seen the photos and saw the gold as a kid in their safe deposit box, where it’s sat for 60 years. Given that she moved to the west, what was the point?
Maybe potato seedlings or canned meat will be more reliable
I wouldn’t call being used in virtually all microchips “little utility,” even relatively.
Plus there are not really any other things that have held significant value for thousands of years. Other than perishables - so great for time traveling too
[0]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-06/perth-mint-gold-dopin...
as the WA Premier said.. its a f*** storm in a teacup
This isn't a storm in a teacup, it's high level corruption in nearly $9Bn worth of trade. The fact that China is the victim really shouldn't factor into it, should it? It's also a bit rich of the WA Premier, as good as he can be on some other issues, to say that this particular issue is a storm in a teacup when he used to run the Perth Mint and may be personally implicated in any finding of corruption.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_thermal_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermomechanical_analysis
Now if you definitely (and you're taking a risk with the shenanigans you need to go through to get/setup this fake item so you want to get paid) want to sell it you need to undercut the fair price. How can you explain a low price? Well, the easy way is to convince the mark that either the two of you are in on a scam together or that the mark is the con.
Personally I don't really agree with that statement, "You can't fool an honest man." but I can see the logic that drives it. Generally it seems like the honest people who get scammed are the ones who are trying to help someone which makes the people running these scams see even more pathetic.
Edit: autocorrect.
Then for some reason, by the time I got around to buying myself one, they'd become a "cool" thing online and the price exploded. Oh well.
To what extent does it matter that some of the bars in the vault are fake if everyone has confidence they’re real?
Also it seems like anyone who might inadvertently acquired some in lieu of the real thing & suspect the fraud down the line, they really have little incentive to cut the bar in half to find out. Best not to know.
Anyone who thinks they might be that person, or thinks they might sell to that person, certainly cares! They’re the ones who will suffer the consequences of the fraud.
Also called "Good Delivery Bars", typically 400oz.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Delivery
https://www.usmint.gov/learn/history/historical-documents/in...
> Creating a shortage where it does not exist can adversely affect every public spirited citizen, taxpayer and conservator of the earth’s resources. It is inflationary should merchants start to round off sales to the next nickel due to lack of pennies to make change.
> Again, I’d like to emphasize. There are plenty of pennies. But they are in the wrong places.
> It is estimated that over 30 billion pennies are in circulation—doing the job for which they were intended. Somewhere in this vast country of ours, however, in excess of 30 billion pennies are in hiding. These are the pennies I’m looking for. They are in dresser drawers, shoe boxes, pickle jars; most anyplace you can think of that will get them out of pocket and out of sight. They are unwanted, unused and unappreciated.
https://www.usmint.gov/learn/history/historical-documents/mi...
And even better - that gold was mostly gold seized by the gov’t from private citizens when private ownership of gold was banned and all circulating coinage and other gold was seized!
It truly is an attractive nuisance for the corrupt.
A decade ago was riding a bus in China, and they had a PSA type ad playing on the screens (paraphrased) "making sure when you're buying gold you distinguish investment (real) gold bars and decorative (fake) gold bars".
I thought "wow, how bad of a problem it must be to need such a PSA".
* https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Latinum
* https://sto.fandom.com/wiki/Gold-Pressed_Latinum
And… tab closed.