Bought my first gold and I am panicking.

I bought a 24K 100g PAMP Suisse Fortuna Gold Rectangular Ingot with VERISCAN. This exact product here. These are my concerns:

1. I tried scanning the thing on the veriscan app on my iPhone and it keeps saying "can not authenticate" I have tried different lightings and all that but still the same error message. I have emailed PAMP but they have yet to reply.

2. I realized the plastic packaging has a lot of scratches and the clingwrap thing on the front of the packaging is peeling on all sides, is that ok? I bought this gold as an investment and I am worried the scratches on the packaging will affect its price for when I sell it in the future.

3. Should I unwrap the packaging because it has a lot of scratches? should I wrap it with something else instead?

I am planning to buy more of the same 100g gold bar in the future as an investment, the thing is, it's really hard to get it with a packaging with no scratches, at least where I am from. And due to the scratches of the packaging, I can not verify if the gold itself inside the packaging does not have any scratch.

I want to know if the scratches on the packaging will affect its price in the future for when I sell it.

Please, your answers will be of great help. I have only recently decided on investing in actual Gold and I have no idea what I am doing.

 

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Did you buy the gold from a reputable source? Scratches won't affect melt value. Also if you have no idea what you're doing then I'd suggest not buying 100g gold pieces.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Well, 100gm of gold will run at least $4250. You should never be spending that much if you don't know what you are doing unless you have enough money that you can throw $4000 away.

But as to your question, the packaging will not affect the value, but it may affect the ease of resale if you want to get more than spot. I guess that depends on what you paid for it. Melt value as I type is around $4300 so there is no way you should have paid more than $4500. Your concern appears to be that it is not genuine. You certainly cannot test for this without removing it from the packaging and even then it is hard to be 100% sure.

Where did you buy it? That may be the critical factor.

 

OP says it was bought here: http://www.pamp.com/mintedingots/AU00RI008S101

 

No he didn't. He said that was the product he bought, but he also said it was damaged so I assumed he bought it on the secondary market.

 

@xeloz01 it would help if you say where you bought it and where you are.

 

You need to check out Alibaba they have all sorts of fakes on their that a identical to the real thing.

 

I would suggest buying 1oz. bars or rounds/coins in the future. Government minted gold bullion coins are safer, and easy to resell.

 

First off all dont panic just yet, there are easy ways to check this item
Out yourself and make sure that it,s real "GOLD", that,s the first step
A metal grading rare earth magnet made out of Neodymium works best
And these are available on the bay for just a couple bucks, they will detect
Bogus gold or silver plating, and be attracted to the metal underneath if
That,s the case i would worry if not and the magnet does not respond
You are looking really good at least you will know that the gold is real

All of my purchase go through this process.

 

I bought it in a reputable place. It's just that the packages of their gold are a bit damaged but still intact.

That is my main concern, if the time comes when I sell it, I'm worried it'll fetch for a lower price or incur some sort of fee since the packaging is not in good condition.

The magnet thing sounds like a good tip. I will try that, does it work with tungsten though? I heard fake gold is usually gold plated tungsten.

 

Found this on the web which may help, and by the way tungston is non magnetic
So you cant test it with a magnet but you can do the following, hope it helps

Gold bars are in the news at the moment due to a discovery recently of a gold bar in the UK filled with tungsten so detecting fake gold bars is important to ensuring that you retain the value of your gold bars.
When you buy gold bars you expect them to be real gold bars, not fake. Fake gold bars are those which have had the gold drilled out of them and the gold replaced by tungsten. Tungsten is a similar weight to gold and so the difference is not easily detected at once. But if you weight the bar there can be enough of a difference to warrant further inspection.

A 1kg gold bar can be drilled and drained of most of its actual gold content and then replaced with tungsten. Such a bar is going to be two grams lighter than a normal gold bar.

Many of these 'gold' bars can be in existence undetected as it is rare that anyone actually tests every individual gold bar they have. In fact Sen. Ron Paul has questioned on more than one occasion if the gold bars in Fort Knox are 100 percent pure. Currently there has been no answer to this question.

If, as some analysts speculate, there are hundreds of these bars in circulation then the true supply of gold in the market place is going to be substantially less than the experts agree. This can affect the gold price as it increases the rarity of gold available.

It at least increases the costs involved in obtaining and checking gold for purity and that can only add to the over price of gold also.

So when you buy gold, make sure you BUY GOLD and not some tungsten fill gold bars.

You can check for tungsten and other minerals or metals in gold bars by melting them down and separating the various metals. Each metal melts at a different temperature, for example tungsten melts at a higher temperature than gold, so the different metals become apparent then. Of course this is an expensive and laborious job and really only should be attempted if one can afford the time and expense and has a number of bars which one feels may be faked.

Another way to detect fake gold bars is the weight them. In a 1kg gold bar the difference will be about 2 grams. Not a great deal but enough to warrant further investigation. Larger bars will have a larger difference in weight of course and smaller bars, a lesser difference in weight. You might consider that it is hardly worth while for the smaller bars due to the amount of work involved drilling and replacing etc. But keep in mind that smaller bars carry a very tiny fraction of weight difference and so extremely hard to detect and with today’s gold prices it becomes a viable proposition. But even this is not guaranteed as if someone takes the time and trouble to mix say iridium with the tungsten to match the weight of the missing gold, in itself a laborious process, then weighing the gold bar or bars may be insufficient as a detecting measure.

According to Hans Zoebelein, of Goldstube24.de, a precious metals trading company in Germany, a very effective way, for smaller bars, is to use eddy current meters.

"Fine gold and fine silver have pretty characteristic conductivities. Add some tiny amount of some other metal to gold or silver and your conductivity changes heavily. Same goes if you having a thin layer of gold or silver above another metal. A minor problem is the limited depth of measurement. You usually are getting a measurement depth of around 0.3mm, but if you are checking small gold bars up to 100 gram eddy current alone is good enough to validate that your bar is OK. The problem is the big bars. They could be filled with tungsten and that fake material would be sitting deep enough. It won't be detected by your eddy current meter if there is enough gold between the surface and the filling. The eddy current tester would tell you that the top most layer is fine gold. But it wouldn't find out about the stuffing.

Here the ultrasonic instrument is coming to your rescue. It shows you whether the big thick bar is homogenous. Or if it is a "gefillte fish" with tungsten buried below some millimeters of fine gold. Testing small bars, even if they are sealed in plastic foil (less than 0.5 mm thick) takes only a few seconds. Testing many kilograms of silver medals for fine silver takes you a few minutes only. Add 0.5% of another metal to fine silver and conductivity breaks down. Also distinguishing genuine coins from fake coins (even if metal composition is the same!) is much easing with an eddy current tester."

When you are buying gold bars then the first thing to do is make sure you buy from a reputable dealer. Do your due diligence on the gold dealer and ensure they are bona fide and have been trading for some time. Check they have a fix premises and not just a website and hotmail email.

Then ensure they carry a guarantee of authenticity for the gold bars INCLUDING a return of the bars if they are found to be fake gold bars. All bars should have a serial number on them which is listed on the invoice so they can be tracked and the dealer knows you are not buying a genuine bar and returning a fake.

If you are buying a large quantity it is possible to have the bars checked with ultrasound. The same device as used to check the condition of unborn babies in hospitals. This will detect any abnormalities such as you would find with a tungsten filled bar. The difference in density between gold and tungsten will show up with the ultrasound.

Apart from making sure one does not lose the value of one's gold, detecting fake gold bars is important as it helps to maintain the accuracy of the gold price when you buy gold.

 

If your concerned about the packaging i would send it back and have them
Send you one that is complete and in nice shape if they refuse to do that
i would just cancel the transaction and buy it somewhere else there are many
Reputable dealers that would have no problem doing this.

 

I suggest buying American Gold Eagles or Buffalo gold from a reliable dealer. Liquid and recognizable. I'll start by mentioning APMEX and Provident Metals.

 

Way too long to read. Lots of things on the web like this



Search for "Using rare earth magnets to test for silver and gold"

 

It has some good information, regardless of the length and if you took the time to
read it you would find out that tungesten is non magnetic your above video would
Not apply to his situation.

 

Basically that is the damage on the packaging that I am worried about...

The side cling wrap thing is a bit torn. Is it a cause for concern?

 

Nice bar

It doesnt look compromised but again i think you should return it, people can
Be a little finicky when you go for the resale.!

 

I will add that I would never buy gold bars. There is always the potential for an issue with assaying them when reselling. I would stick with established bullion coins made by one of the major national mints. If you are in the US go with Buffaloes or AGEs. If you are elsewhere consider Krugerrands or products of your local mint. Also, wherever you are, consider European coins from around 100 years ago. They are about 1/5th to 1/4th ounce each and are very easy to resell.

 

Silver is not magnetic either, however rare earth magnets can be used to detect it by the fact that it is diamagnetic, which can be distinguished from paramagnetic or ferromagnetic.

 

It looks fine to me. There is a protective plastic film on the card that's starting to peel. You could just remove it if you don't like the look. Thats the only "damage" I see.