Two years ago, world were shocked by a video about fake tungsten gold found in Germany. A few days ago, ABC Bullion of Australia reported about finding 1 kilo Tungsten Gold found in UK, complete with pictures of the legitimate Metalor 1000gm Au bar filled with tungsten. From the picture, look like the gold bar has been drilled out and filled with tungsten. According to ABC Bullion, The Bar is brought from a scrap metal dealer in UK, complete with its original certificate. The owner of the business that purchased the bar only became suspicious when he realized the weight discrepancy and had the bar cropped. He estimates between 30-40% of the weight of the bar to be Tungsten.
Pictures by ABC Bullion.
From ABC Bullion: Thursday, March 22, 2012.
"ABC Bullion received the following email from one of our trusted suppliers this week.
Note:
It was not ABC Bullion that purchased this bar, the email and photos were sent to us as a general warning.
I xxxx'ed out the city's name to avoid any second guessing as to the name of the dealer.
19/03/2012:
Attached are photographs of a legitimate Metalor 1000gm Au bar that has been drilled out and filled with Tungsten (W).
This bar was purchased by staff of a scrap dealer in xxxxx, UK yesterday. The bar appeared to be perfect other than the fact that it was 2gms underweight. It was checked by hand-held xrf and showed 99.98% Au. Being Tungsten, it would not be ferro-magnetic. The bar was supplied with the original certificate.
The owner of the business that purchased the bar only became suspicious when he realized the weight discrepancy and had the bar cropped. He estimates between 30-40% of the weight of the bar to be Tungsten.
This is very worrying and reinforces the lengths that people are willing to go to profit from the current high metal prices. Please be careful."
A pawn shop in Klang, Selangor, also warned me about the Tungsten filled gold bar last year. The girl who work there said they found few tungsten filled bar try to be pawn or sold as genuine gold bar. What I know, the tungsten filled bar cases only involve large gold bar-100gm and no famous gold bullion bar has been related to such cases. To anyone who don't know, tungsten is one element that has just about the same density as gold. Alloying gold with tungsten would not work for several reasons but a coin with a tungsten center and gold all around it could not be detected as counterfeit by density measurement alone.
