Gold bar: weight, dimensions, photo

Main characteristics

Gold is not only a beautiful metal with a lot of positive characteristics, but also an alloy that is not subject to oxidation and does not darken over time. It can act as a conductor and is widely used for medical purposes. Due to its properties, gold products are incredibly durable, and due to its antiseptic properties, it is used in some medicines and cosmetics.

This precious metal has an incredibly high density, so even the small size of gold bars provides a decent weight to the product. For example, a small ball with a diameter of only 5 cm weighs more than a kilogram. Used in many areas of life, this metal can also be called an excellent means of investing money. This hard currency can be exchanged for the money of any country in the world.

Manufacturing methods

According to the manufacturing method, a gold bar can be cast or stamped. The method in which molten metal is poured into certain molds, in which it cools and solidifies, is called casting.

Production of cast ingot.

Stamping is a method in which an ingot is produced using high-tech equipment. As a result, a small bar takes the shape of a regular parallelepiped of gold with a mirror surface, on which a quality mark is engraved, just like on a cast one.

Sberbank mainly shows photos of stamped bars, since gold in them looks more attractive than in cast ones. It is extremely rare to find powder products that were formed electrolytically from precious metal powder. They are the most inexpensive in terms of production, but in Russia the standard does not provide for this manufacturing option, so they are difficult to find for sale in Russian banks.

Gold Investments

At all times, experienced people kept a certain part of their money in gold equivalent and thus avoided economic problems during all kinds of crisis situations. It is a safe and stable investment whose main purpose is to preserve the value of money.

Gold bullion is a great option for storing money for those who are tired of constantly checking financial news and price jumps, as there is no need for it. For quick enrichment, gold is not the most suitable option, since it is designed for the long term.

National bars of Sberbank of Russia

Gold is a long-term and profitable investment. Upon purchase, identification is required and tax is paid unless the bullion is kept in a special metal account at the bank. Under the conditions offered by the Russian Sberbank, gold bullion can be purchased by both individuals and legal entities.

The main advantage of buying a precious metal is its complete safety, regardless of the financial situation of the bank or, for example, its bankruptcy. Also, gold is not tied to the legislative framework of the state, and it can be sold in any country in the world.

Nowadays, buying this metal in a bank is very popular among the population. At a time when no currency in the world can be called stable, gold coins and bars are a model of constancy, and their prices do not fall, but even vice versa. Bank bars are cast not only from gold. Silver, platinum and palladium are also used for this. A gold bar of 999 purity purchased from a bank does not contain foreign impurities.

Gold: the path from jewelry scrap to bullion

The Austrian plant Ögussa GmbH, located in Vienna, produces blanks for jewelry workshops and factories, produces laboratory equipment from precious and non-ferrous metals, and also casts measured silver and gold bars. The raw materials for bullion are scrap jewelry and outdated and defective jewelry.

Scrap received for smelting is loaded into a smelting furnace, where high temperatures transform it into a liquid homogeneous mass, which is then cast into ingot molds. The material that goes to smelting is called “charge” or simply “charge”. The charge can be pure metals, defective ingots and jewelry, scrap and waste from jewelry production. Before entering the melting furnace, the charge material undergoes certain processing.

First, waste and scrap are subjected to cleaning treatment and only then enter the smelter.

Melting of precious metals is carried out in induction furnaces with a graphite crucible (a refractory vessel in which the metal is melted).

Before loading the crucible with the charge material, it is heated, then the bottom of the vessel is filled with flux. The charge is loaded into the crucible, the desired temperature is set and the melting of the metal begins. After melting the charge material, the melt is coated with a small amount of fresh flux and mixed. Maintaining the same heating temperature, the melt is left to settle. To remove unnecessary oxides and impurities, which is carried out using flux, a deoxidizing agent is introduced.

When melting a gold alloy, the furnace heats up to a temperature of 1200-1250 degrees Celsius.

To cast ingots, molten precious metal is poured into steel and cast iron molds.

A mold (or ingus) is a mold in the form of a metal bar in which a groove is made that follows the shape of the future ingot. The molds are calcined together with technological lubricants to a temperature of 500-550 degrees Celsius. Thanks to these lubricants, the melt spreads well throughout the cell, thereby ensuring good quality of the cast ingot. The whole process is similar to making shortbread cookies in molds: the mold is heated and then lubricated with a special graphite coating so that the gold does not burn.

Once the melt is ready, it is cast into the mold through a special drain chute in the crucible. After completion of the crystallization and aging process, the ingot is removed.

Molten gold has a viscous, flowing consistency and looks like jelly. Gold hardens quite quickly: even when in a hot form and in a gas torch, the crystallization process takes only a few seconds. The worker then takes out the ingot and puts it in cold water.

In the chemical laboratory of the plant, a small sample of a specific melt is checked, and only after that information about it will be stamped on the ingot. If the composition of the gold is not pure enough, then it is again melted down.

Each bar is stamped with its own number, gold manufacturer's mark and fineness.

Measured (cast) and standard (stamped)

Compared to standard ones, measured gold bars look more beautiful. Photos of them can be seen in this article. Measured ingots of the purest standard are produced in different weights: from 1 gram to 1 kilogram. The following requirements apply to them:

Indication of length and width, as well as the maximum permissible error in weight.
Smooth and clean surface without any defects or damage.
Availability of clear markings and a certificate indicating the name of the country, weight and other data.

State standards determine how many kg a gold bar should contain.

Stamped gold bars also have their own characteristics:

999 standard and large sizes: from 11 to 13.5 kg.
As a rule, the shape of the ingot is made in the form of a regular truncated pyramid.
No visible external damage, with the exception of stripping or dents up to 5 mm deep.
Availability of markings with certain information.

Prikol.ru - jokes, pictures, photos and practical jokes!

1) A visitor touches the world's largest gold bar, weighing 220 kg, kept at the Gold Museum in Taipei, Taiwan. The cost of the bar at current prices is over $7.8 million.

2) 1000 year old gold coin minted in Egypt and dated 1095.

3) A golden figurine of a bird of prey is on display at the Ginza Tanaka store in Tokyo.

4) Creation of gold jewelry at a jewelry factory in the Indian city of Calcutta.

5) A man holds a spoon full of golden leaves. The photo was taken in London.

7) Trays of gold bars await final weighing and packaging. The photo was taken at the KrasTsvetMet plant in Krasnoyarsk.

Buddha figurine made of pure gold. The photo was taken at an exhibition in Tokyo.

9) Weighing and calculating the cost of gold jewelry.

10) Gold figurines in Hong Kong

11) Colombian gold miners on the Dagau River. There are about 8,000 illegal miners working there.

12) A Colombian gold dealer is weighing his goods.

13) Gold jewelry found in Scotland dates back to 300-100 BC.

14)

15) A gold miner rolls a wheelbarrow into a mine north of San Jose, Costa Rica. Unofficially, about 600 gold miners work in abandoned mines.

16) Illegal gold mine in a national park in Brazil.

17)

18) Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The figurines are made of pure gold. Their value is now $300,000.

19) Caterpillar mining truck at a gold mine in Colorado.

20)

21)

22) The Golden Berlin Bear is the main award of the Berlin Film Festival. In fact, the bear is made of bronze and plated with gold.

23)

24) Women in the Indonesian province of Aceh participate in traditional gold mining. You can mine 1.5-2 grams of gold per day and earn $28.

25) Aceh Province. Golden grains of sand.

26) Bulgarian archaeologist Veselin Ignatov holds a gilded silver cup with the image of the Greek god of love Eros.

27) Illegal gold miners at a gold mine in eastern Java, Indonesia.

28) Ibid.

29) The model of the town is made of pure gold. Weighs 15 kilograms and costs 1.3 million dollars.

30) Molten gold. The process of removing impurities is underway.

31) Molten gold is poured into molds to produce gold bars.

32) Gold bars. The photo was taken at the Ginza Tanaka store in Tokyo.

33) Creating an ornament.

34) Golden busts of Chinese leaders at an exhibition in Beijing.

35) Gold mining in northern Myanmar.

36) General view of a gold-copper mine in Australia.

37) Pure gold.

What determines the cost of a bank bullion?

Changes in the price of gold bars may be influenced by several factors, namely:

Additional costs for delivery, insurance, bank markup.
Manufacturer's logo.
Cast or stamped production technology.
A corresponding certificate that should not be lost unless you intend to lose a percentage of the value of the bullion.
Safety of the ingot packaging.
Dependence of weight and size: if the gold bar is large, therefore, its price per gram will be less.
Appearance, scratches or other defects.

Gold bars. Description and application of gold bars

Golden bullets. These were used by the Tungus in the 18th and 19th centuries. The taiga people could not afford tin. It was too expensive for visiting merchants. But there were free nuggets in the Tonguda River, along the banks of which the Tungus grazed herds. Representatives of a small nation collected gold near a reservoir.

The bullets were soft, but better than arrows and bayonets. Unusual uses of precious metal today include toilets in prestigious homes, clothing, and children's toys. Standard use is gold bars. They are sold by banks as investment goods. Let's find out how it is made and what models it has.

The process of “birth” of gold bars

Any gold bar is made from charge. This is the name of the material for melting. They can be pure metal, defective products, including bank blocks, or scrap jewelry. The charge is pre-cleaned, separating 100% gold from it. He is sent to the furnace. It is used in induction furnaces with a graphite crucible (heating container).

The gold bars in the bank must be 999.9 purity. This is the federal standard. To remove impurities, even minimal ones, from the alloy, metallurgists place flux at the bottom of the crucible. They also sprinkle it on top of the mixture poured into the vat. The additive draws out contaminants, turning them into slag. All that remains is to separate it from the gold.

Flux picks up impurities while the heated mixture settles. The initial temperature is about 1,300 degrees Celsius. Then the mass cools, is cleaned and sent to the molds. These are cast iron molds for casting ingots.

Metal lays the cut out puzzle. It is preheated to 600 degrees so that the gold spreads evenly throughout the container. If a cavity remains, the product will be considered defective. No one will want to buy such gold bars .

Housewives will appreciate the comparison of making bank bullion with baking shortbread. There are molds that are lubricated with oil (graphite coating), dough (gold) is poured through a chute, placed in the oven, removed, cooled, and removed from the molds.

It only takes a few seconds for gold to crystallize. From the jelly-like mass, the valuable metal is transformed into its usual form. The blocks are taken out with tongs and lowered into cold water, cooling. While the temperature of the product decreases, a melt sample is sent to the laboratory.

This is how, for example, all Sberbank gold bars are produced. Prices correspond to certain alloy indicators. If the analytical workshop concludes that the parameters are met, the blocks will be marked with appropriate markings.

Types of gold bars

Sberbank presents two main types of gold bars. Measuring blocks cannot be heavier than a kilogram. The size range starts from 1 gram. The standard required by federal law is 999.9. Externally, the ingots comply with GOSTs 51572 and 51784. The first rules were issued in 2000, the second - in 2001.

of dimensional gold bars

According to GOSTs the purchase of gold bars is not carried out if there are burrs, grease deposits, cracks and delaminations on their surface. Long-term storage may cause concavity and shrinkage. They are also considered a marriage. Briquettes are sent for processing.

Bank clients should not be confused by the difference in the thickness of the bars. Their width is not standardized by GOSTs. The main thing is to maintain the mass of briquettes. They are weighed in front of customers on electronic scales. Only after this can you buy a gold bar from Sberbank or another financial institution.

There are also standard ingots. They are manufactured according to GOST 1989. Document number - 28058. Measuring blocks are called lightweight, and standard ones are called heavyweight. The initial weight mark is 11 kilograms.

The largest ingots weigh 13.3 kilograms. The shapes and sizes of products are not regulated. The parameters are agreed upon with the customer, that is, with the bank. But, most often, briquettes are made in the form of truncated pyramids.

The surface of standard blocks can be stripped to a depth of no more than 1 millimeter. The metal is marked with the year of manufacture, manufacturing plant, sample, weight, state emblem, name of the precious raw material and serial number. Sberbank complies with all markings when offering to buy a gold bar. But, what is the price ?

Gold bar price

of gold bars is higher than the cost of the yellow metal established on world financial exchanges. Banks put their own profit into the product. You need to cover the costs of transportation, storage, creating branded packaging, and also earn extra money.

Therefore, for example, for a gram measuring block at Moscow Bank they ask for 3,000 rubles, while a gram of gold on the exchanges is valued at 2,600.

The conclusion arises that buying a gold bar, the price of which at first glance is unprofitable, is reasonable only as a long-term investment, or a prestigious gift. World reserves of the yellow metal are limited.

According to experts, with today's production volumes, it will last no more than 100 years. Therefore, the price of gold is steadily increasing. By overpaying now, you can get a solid benefit in 10-20 years.

You also have to pay for precious briquettes in Skyrim. A gold bar in an online game cannot be purchased with money. The pay is hard work. You have to mine gold veins and smelt the bullion yourself. The results of labor can be sold to merchants. They pay real, or rather virtual, coins for gold.

In the game you cannot experiment with drawing an ingot into a thread. Gold is so soft and malleable that a 1-gram block can be turned into 3 kilometers of wire. In real life, the experiment has been carried out thousands of times.

New world record

Until recently, the record holder for its weight was a gold bar in Taiwan weighing 220 kilograms. The Japanese surpassed this result by casting a precious piece weighing 250 kilograms and costing 12.5 million dollars, and submitted an application for this to the Guinness Book of Records.

There is a statement that the smaller the weight of the ingot, the more expensive each gram is worth. And the larger its size, the cheaper it will be per gram of yellow metal. But if you look at the huge gold bars (the photographs clearly demonstrate them), you can doubt the veracity of this statement.

Gold, gold, gold... (37 photos)

Gold has always been, is and will remain an item of high material value and an object of desire - it has increased in price by 135%. just for the past year. The latest sharp increase in gold prices coincides with an annual decline in gold production worldwide - by as much as 8% since 2001. In the entire history of mankind, only 161,000 tons of gold were extracted from mines. Moreover, more than half of this amount occurred in the last 50 years. In this photo collection we invite you to look at photographs of people who search for, mine, find, buy and sell gold.

A visitor touches the world's largest gold bar, which weighs 220 kg and is worth more than $7.8 million, at the Jinguashi Gold Museum in Ruifang, Taipei, December 2, 2009.

2. November 11, 2009. Chava Katz, chief of treasures for the Israel Ancient Archaeological Organization, holds a 1,000-year-old gold coin believed to have been minted in Egypt in 1095 A.D. on display at the Davidson Archaeological Center. The coin was brought to Jerusalem by Muslim pilgrims.

3. A bird of prey statue made of gold is displayed at the gold and silver exhibition at the Ginza Tanaka department store in Tokyo on October 23, 2009.

4. An artisan makes gold jewelry at a jewelry factory in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata on November 13, 2009.

5. November 14, 2009. A man holds a gold leaf spoon as he prepares to eat sushi at the awards ceremony for Seven Samurai Sushi Restaurant, which won the best sushi bar category, at the Olympic Exhibition Center in London. Gold leaf was one of the ingredients on the menu of last year's winning restaurant, Mitsunori Kusakabe.

6. Children from poor Turkana region pan for grains of gold. This helps their families survive and buy the most necessary goods at the flea market for children's goods. The photo was taken on November 9, 2009 near Lodwar, Kenya.

7. November 16, 2009. Carts with gold bars in them in a room for final weighing and packaging in Krasnoyarsk.

A Buddha statue made of pure gold is seen at the Ginza Tanaka store in Tokyo on November 26, 2009.

9. October 30, 2009. Pedro Linares uses a calculator to calculate how much he works for gold jewelry at a scale in Hialeah, Florida. Since the price of gold continues to remain high, the company is trying to organize promotions so that it would be profitable for people to sell gold that they no longer need.

10. November 17, 2009. Gold figurines in a store window in Hong Kong.

11. November 17, 2009. Colombian gold miners are searching for valuable metal in the Dagao River, Zaragoza province, Cauca, Colombia. About eight thousand gold miners illegally mine gold on the Dagua River to feed their families.

12. A gold dealer weighs gold on a scale in Cauca, Colombia, November 17, 2009.

13. Amateur gold miner David Booth with his finds belonging to the Iron Age on November 4, 2009 in Edinburgh. Booth found gold Celtic necklaces on private property in Stirlingshire, these items date back to approximately 300-100 BC. At the moment, the bracelets are under the protection of the Treasure Hunters Union. According to Scottish law, all archaeological sites found become the property of the government.

Gold-toothed football player Chris Johnson of the Tennessee Titans sits on the bench during his team's game against the San Francisco 49ers at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on November 8, 2009.

15. December 9, 2009. A gold miner hauls a wheelbarrow of rocks that will later be processed at a mine in Abangares, north of San Jose, Costa Rica. Costa Rica is set to legalize 600 informal small-scale miners who extract gold from abandoned mines using dangerous and environmentally damaging methods.

People work in an illegal quarry located in a national park near Novo Progremmo in the northern state of Paral in Brazil on September 15, 2009.

17. January 20, 2010, London. A Christie's auction worker looks at Yves Klein's "Relief Sponge." The Golden Sponge will be auctioned on February 11 in the “Post-War and Contemporary Art” section. It is expected that the work will be sold for an estimated amount of 5.7 to 8 million euros.

18. November 4, 2009, Tokyo. The model shows off the 30 million yen ($300,000) figurines of Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, made from solid gold. The figurines were made specifically for the promotion of Blu-ray discs with Disney cartoons

19. November 5, 2009. A truck on the road at the AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. gold mining facility. Cripple Creek & Victor" in Victor/Cripple Creek, Colorado. AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. - the company, which is the largest gold producer in Africa - bought in January 2008 to gain full control of this gold mine

20. November 5, 2009. At the gold mining enterprise AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. Cripple Creek & Victor in Colorado, Sharon Brumley pours molten samples into molds to calculate the total gold content.

21. November 5, 2009. A coal recovery mechanism absorbs gold from a sodium cyanide solution in Colorado.

22. Gilded figurines of the Berlin Bear before the start of the International Film Festival "Berlinale" at a factory in Berlin on January 20, 2010.

23. A worker shows a rock sample that contains some copper and gold to visitors to the Oyu Tolgoi mine in Khanbogd village, Umnugobi province, Mongolia, November 7, 2009. Mongolia is trying to develop its mineral deposits so that the country can overcome the crisis and improve its standard of living.

24. A woman in a cave under the river bank, where she went down to collect mud that might contain gold. Photo taken on November 2, 2009 in Pidi District, Aceh Province, Indonesia. Residents of the area engaged in traditional gold prospecting and gold mining can find approximately 1.5-2 grams of gold per day and get 275,000 rupees ($28) for it.

25. A villager washes gold dust from sand from the bottom of a river in Pidi district, Indonesia's Aceh province, November 2, 2009.

26. Bulgarian archaeologist Veselin Ignatov displays a gilded silver cup depicting the Greek god of love Eros. The cup was found on November 17, 2009 in the Tratsian mound, near the village of Karanovo, Bulgaria. A team of archaeologists led by Ignatov found a chariot, two silver cups, gold rings and jewelry, as well as clay and glass objects dating back to the first century AD.

27. November 21, 2009. Illegal gold miners search for gold in the Tumpang Pitu Mountains in Banuwangi, East Java, Indonesia. The mine located here has been operating since June 2009, and local residents have already begun to protest because waste from the mine pollutes the environment.

28. November 21, 2009. An illegal gold miner pans for sand and silt in hopes of finding gold in the Tumpang Pitu Mountains in Banuwangi, East Java, Indonesia.

29. October 23, 2009. A Japanese woman admires the gold model, which is called “I wish I could shoot at the stars” and is on display at the gold and silver exhibition in Tokyo. This luxury item is 30 centimeters tall, made of 15 kilograms of pure gold and costs 130 million yen ($1.3 million).

30. January 4, 2010. Molten gold and charge, which is used to remove impurities, burn with a red flame as it melts in an induction melting apparatus in New York. 31. Robert Stohler pours molten gold into a mold in New York on January 4, 2010. (Daniel Acker/Bloomberg)

31. Robert Stohler pours liquid gold into a mold in New York on January 4, 2010.

32. October 23, 2009. Gold bars are located in the Ginza Tanaka store in Tokyo.

33. A blacksmith works on creating gold jewelry in a workshop in Shandigarh, India, November 23, 2009.

34. Gold busts of (from left to right) Chinese leaders: President Hu Jintao, former President Jiang Zemin, late Patriarch Deng Xiaoping and Mao Zedong. The busts are displayed at the Beijing Gold Exhibition on November 8, 2009.

35. January 7, 2010. Villagers pan for gold along the Irramaddy River near the Bakhalminhtin Bridge near Myitkyina town, northern Myanmar.

36. January 8, 2010. A general view of an open pit gold and copper mine in Orange County, Australia. . The company's management signed new leasing agreements and received new modern equipment.

37. January 4, 2010. Pure gold in New York.

Pros and cons of this type of investment

Before investing in gold, you need to carefully weigh all the pros and cons of this venture. Among the advantages, it is worth mentioning protection from inflation, a simple process of buying and selling, the internationality of the currency, as well as a gradual increase in value.

However, the investment process also comes with some negative aspects. First, you need to pay tax, which is 18% of the amount. Therefore, buying and immediately selling an ingot will be completely unprofitable, since this acquisition only pays off in the long term.

Storing gold at home comes with certain risks. In addition, even slight damage to the integrity of the ingot or its packaging can radically affect its price. Bank custody services also cost money.

To protect yourself from sudden changes in the political or economic life of society, it is recommended to invest from 10 to 30% of your savings in gold. Then, approaching retirement age, you don’t have to worry about lack of funds. Gold can be sold slowly or left to your descendants.

How to distinguish a real gold coin or bar from a fake

As you know, the purer the gold, the softer it is. And if a tooth breaks when biting a coin, then it is not made of gold at all. But is it worth ruining your teeth to check your own collection?

Modern technologies make it possible to easily make copies of anything. Moreover, coins are rarely equipped with additional degrees of protection, and there is no need to talk about watermarks at all.

It is not uncommon for the Internet to start sounding the alarm related to precedents for the appearance of such counterfeits. For example, the World of Coins resource warns in a series of articles about counterfeit gold coins that are semi-legally produced in China. Now everyone is afraid of the influx of cheap oriental copies, and buying on online auctions like eBay no longer seems so safe.

It’s strange, but throughout their entire career, Gold Reserve specialists have never had to deal with counterfeits of such popular coins as the American Eagle or the Maple Leaf. To clarify the situation, we turned to a professional expert with 30 years of experience, but he, too, has encountered fakes only twice in his entire life.

The thing is that such a game is not worth the candle. Indeed, for complete authenticity, a fake must be made of gold with precise preservation of the ratio of weight and dimensions. Exemplars made of other metals and gilded are too easy to recognize in this sense.

Counterfeiting may only make sense in the case of rare coins. Their high cost justifies the counterfeiters' expenses on pure gold, compliance with proportions and the procedure of artificial aging of the metal. Only an experienced specialist can distinguish such a fake.

In America, collectors have long used the services of independent professional appraisers before exchanging coins.

However, despite this, fakes have recently appeared, even enclosed in plastic capsules and equipped with a certificate. It is mainly China that is guilty of this. Therefore, you can protect yourself from such a “pig in a poke” by simply not buying coins associated with this country on the Internet.

We should also talk about gold bars. Their falsification is much more difficult to detect. In order not to waste time on trifles, criminals produce illegal copies of kilogram and heavier bars at once. They are usually not stamped, numbered or mistyped. Even a genuine, real ingot of this weight can easily be drilled out and cheaper metal poured inside.

A similar story happened not long ago in Hong Kong, where thousands of counterfeit gold bars weighing 12.5 kilograms were discovered. Now these fakes have already spread worldwide. Even the famous Fort Knox is suspected of storing about 640 such counterfeits.

It is believed that these fake copies contain tungsten, which best imitates gold. Standard testing of surface conductivity and density of the ingot is powerless in this case. This requires more expensive and in-depth tests with drilling of the internal volume.

Checking each bar for authenticity at each subsequent change of owner is expensive and impractical. In order to somehow protect the liquidity of this market, the London Bullion Metals Association (LBMA) introduced the concept of “bars from a reliable supplier”.

As part of this system, ingot manufacturers undergo mandatory accreditation and certification. Manufacturers are also inspected by accredited inspectors. Only 400-ounce bars that have serial numbers and stamps from trusted foundries will be allowed into the vaults.

It turns out that the history of each of these bars can be easily tracked and thus provide adequate protection for transactions with gold. Suspicious bars from non-accredited sources, which may be counterfeit, simply will not enter the system.

The online hype around tungsten ingots is easy to verify. The test can be the presence or absence of such news on the resources of reputable financial information agencies such as Reuters or Bloomberg. Since they were not there, a legitimate question arises - “Why?” But because there is no information about the sources of this information, about the victims of this scam, about the trials, etc. Everything is only at the level of rumors and speculation.

As you can see, such a serious problem as counterfeiting coins made of precious metals practically does not exist today. Perhaps it will appear in the future. And, in order to protect yourself and your collection from counterfeits, it is better to establish relationships with a reliable and regular supplier.

In conclusion, here are some expert tips to help you avoid becoming a victim of fraud:

Unless you're a professional, it's best to avoid anniversary and memorial releases. Try to purchase standard coins, such as “St. George the Victorious”.
When buying bullion, insist on presenting the relevant papers. For bars over a kilogram, an examination is required.
Try not to purchase coins and bars online from dubious sellers.

Do not neglect to be careful and carry out the following simple tests when purchasing:

Use a magnet to check if the coin or bar contains steel;
The specific gravity of gold exceeds that of most metals. Remember Archimedes' experiments with a bathtub and check this characteristic of an ingot or coin.
If you suspect that the coin is not gold, apply nitric acid to it. In this case, gold will not react, but a counterfeit coin made of a different material will be destroyed.
When dealing with rare coins made of precious metals, constantly improve your level of knowledge in this area, take an interest in all the news on the topic, and then counterfeits will not be so scary for you.

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