Isaac Kahan's  Instablog

In a market infested with scams now there is a new problem, which may be the worst case of fraud I have ever known in this market: a 1-kg gold bar that had already been certified as 99.98% pure by X-ray fluorescent tests has turned out to be fake! To be able to fool even X-rays is quite an accomplishment. As it turned out, the gold in the bar had been drilled out and replaced with the chemical element tungsten. The only reason that this was ever discovered was simply because the counterfeit bar ended up weighing two grams lighter than it should have.

It's scary to think that, had they succeeded in getting the bar to weigh an extra two grams, the scam would have succeeded and the owner of the bar would most likely have never been the wiser and spent years believing that he had more wealth than he did. And let's say that when he chose to sell this bar, the buyer he chose might also be unable to tell the difference and pay the full price for it. And so that bar would enter circulation, indistinguishable from other gold bars. Imagine that: a piece of tungsten so convincing as gold and valued that same as if it were gold that, for all intensive purposes, it might as well be gold!

All of this serves as a very clear reminder that storing wealth of any kind has its drawbacks, and while gold may be a more reliable form than any government-sanctioned fiat can ever be, it does come with its own economic consequences, which can lead to its own problems. Fortunately, Bullion Trading gets its gold directly from the source, and so the safest and more secure way to purchase a gold bar is from a dealer who knows the business and knows the world of precious metals.

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.