I got to see some of the fake shit at the gold shop the other day. Those little Chinese ass hats are getting pretty good. I saw some fake Perth mint ounces. The package was a perfect copy. Luckily upon close examination the fake bars are not too hard to spot if you know what to look for. The gold plating on these wears off all most immediately upon handling it. If you have the real version to compare it to spotting the fakes is easy. Then if you have a 1 ounce fake bar that they have made to weigh 1ozt out of brass or copper it's at least twice as thick as gold. A 1toz bar looks suspiciously thick. If they make it dimensionally correct it won't weigh nearly as much as an ounce. At one time there was a lot of fake pamp out, but they spelled "pamp" wrong on the back side so it's easy to spot. Unfortunately this is not a new problem. It's probably been around for almost as long as people have been using gold as a medium of trade.
A relative bought fake Kreugerrands back in the nineties. $40,000 worth of 14k plated lead. He has a divorce to show for it. The US Marshall service confiscated the Kreugerrands when he went to the authorities even though they were fake.
Lot's of fake silver going around too. Fake Eagles, Pandas, etc., even saw a fake Walking Liberty half dollar, no special date and even had a well worn look like it had been in circulation for years. I understand that they even have the weight correct on the newer fakes, but then they fail the thickness test. A good scale, vernier calipers, and neodymium magnets are in order for doing multiple tests to weed out the fakes. I have a metal detector which has visual and audio coin ID that will eliminate fakes in a heartbeat.
Sometimes it's worth paying the premium from a reputable dealer that has a guarantee on the product they sell.
So, what has been all y'all's experience when trying to sell? You greeted with as much suspicion and doubt as is prudent in buying such that selling is difficult?
if you develop a rapport with your 'dealer' not much of an issue at all. you've bought low and sold high with them. Guess what, they do the same thing. I think that they are even more greedy than me!
Investing in one's own survival skills in many aspects of life, and tools and solid relationships, and a good rotating stock of canned foods and water and defensive tools and their skill ,these are good investment better then gold. IF another currency takes over ,it will be a long time before it is accepted world wide in the mean time you must eat and defend your family.
I'll state it here like I do every other time when discussing PM's. PM's are not for SHTF (in my opinion). I see 2 times for their use: Pre-SHTF: Times of economic uncertainty like Hyperinflation, and maybe when your government decides to pull out all the large bills out of circulation and make one start conducting business electronically (war on cash). Post-SHTF: The world has gone to hell in a handbasket and is starting to recover (like after you are gone and the grandkids and great grand kids are rebuilding the place). And a new 'currency' for exchange is being developed. There is a greater likelihood that shiny PMs will still be viable. But no guarantee. Again, just my 2
You can buy from APMEX and silvertowne on ebay. I traded a bunch of silvertowne silver to afghan jewelrs while I was over there and they were always happy to see me and never tried to cut my head off. So their stuff is real. This isn't just shtf, it's retirement planning too. Because I'm expecting the government to seize 401k type accounts to either save social security or after it implodes. Shtf may be a personal one, the most common thing I see is people not saving any money at all and out living their ability to provide for then selves. It seems no one prepares for the most personal of disasters. With the dealer I found its buy locally and sell to a place like apmex. Those apmex guys will give full spot price. The local place will give 10 to 20 under spot, but it's all cash, and they ask 10 to 20 over spot. Where the big dealers like apmrx always ask at least 25 over spot and charge shipping. My wife says she can plane film digital x-ray or CT suspect bars with tungsten in them. Says it would show up real good.
I got into silver a few years back and it has treated me well. Just too much value per ounce in gold for my taste. Too easy to lose big.
I think PMs have limited uses now and would be almost useless i an emergency let alone SHTF This video says a lot
If they only had limited use then why is silver and gold sustaining the highest overall price for the longest peroid price in history? The people in the video are what we call sheeple. They likely have no plan for retirement, no plan for shtf, no plan beyond dinner tonight and work tomorrow morning. Probably buy everything they own on credit. Plus all those people would be dead in a month with out water commin out the faucet or groceries on the store shelf so no need to worry about trading with them anyways. It's proof however the public education system is working very well.
This makes me think...I really need to do something about converting the nuggets and flake that I have purchased from local prospectors into a more accepted form without sacrificing too much.
Big nuggets can go from 120% to 200% of spot at retail as a "souvenir". Raw nuggets will only be around 90% pure and will have some melt loss so selling them to a dealer will reflect this.
My experience is raw flake and small nuggets are more readily accepted as currency due to less suspicion about it being genuine. I only keep a small amount in coinage with the rest in it's original state including some dust. Not that the total is any great amount as I prefer lead, copper and brass as shtf currency.
Having grown up around Gold Hill, NC, me and a buddy used to pan a few spots and earn a good steak dinner once in a while. We had a coin dealer who would weigh us up and pay cash. At the time gold was around $350 an ounce, and we could usually get 2 or 3 tenths for a few hours work. Our biggest find was a 1.8 ounce "nugget", really a large chip. Historic Gold Hill – In the Middle of Everywhere On another note, more gold came from North Carolina than from California. It was also the site of the first gold found in the United States. Reed Gold Mine - Wikipedia NC was also home to Emeralds,Sapphires, and Hiddenite. The wife wears an emerald ring made with a stone I found. Hiddenite, North Carolina - Wikipedia I bring all of this up because as long as I can remember, people in the area have made fakes of gemstones and gold nuggets.
I Google searched how to tell if gold is real and how to avoid tungsten rod filled gold bars. The easiest way to avoid fakes is just avoid the commonly faked items. Which are gold bars heavier than 50gm. Most of the rod bars are bars, not coins. I say it's really difficult to spend an ounce or more of gold in one place so you shouldn't really be buying anything bigger than a ounce. The ideal size to me is 20gm, any smaller then they start really raking you over the coals with spot fees. There are several high tech, low tech and no tech methods for testing gold. Look them up and pick the ones you like. Everything from a mobile app that listens to the sound the gold bar or coin makes when dropped to rubbing gold on rough porcelain surface. A 8 year old could do a lot of these.
