When they were sawing that bar open, it looked like the gold layer on the outside was visibly thick. Given that, I'm surprised an XRF device was able to penetrate the gold layer. (At least I assume that's what they were using; I don't know what else would non-destructively read out elemental percentages like that.) I'm also surprised that the guy was just plopping the bar on top of a plate like that for a reading, with no shielding or other radiation precautions. Seems sketchy to me.
I think it's an XRF tester, and yeah, I want one, too. They cost about as much as a new car. Edit to add: or about as much as you'd lose buying five or ten fake gold ounces.
You can get an XRF tester for under $2000 and they are not radioactive so perfectly safe. In a couple of weeks I will post about how an XRF tester exposed a crook who traded something worth $7500 dollars and the XRF tester subsequently showed the 17th Coin was made in recent years. Before 1800 Silver showed traces of gold and lead until they knew how to refine it out and my coin was pure silver although aged.. I would have bet my life on that coin but the XRF tester and unfortunately a TPG proved me wrong. Once the legals are out of the way I'll post my experience.
My local coin shop zaps everything with their gun. It was funny when my stepmom was selling off some jewelry they zapped the bunch(well one piece at a time) - pulled one earring out of the bunch and said that one is not gold. So one earring was gold and one was not gold.
PS - it did not really say where he got them from. Some people think they can buy fake stuff and take it to the local shop to try to sell them as real.
10 gram Gold Bar - The Perth Mint - 99.99 Fine in Sealed Assay | eBay Here's one on ebay. The seller has a total of 3 feedback left, and 2 of them are negatives saying it's fake gold. I don't know why ebay hasn't banned them already...
Because EBAY's AI sucks - it just checks the auction to make nothing is listed in the auction incorrectly. I doubt it looks at feed back.
And the 3rd feedback was automated, ostensibly because the buyer waited too long for a conclusion before leaving it. In my opinion, eBay IS uncontestedly . . . Counterfeit Central.
All eBay cares about is getting their 13.5% selling fee. I think what they're doing is likely criminal.
You must be thinking of something else. I've seen used units listed for under $10K, but never under $5K, and I wouldn't trust that the ones on the low end are really in working order. New ones start in five figures. And the name is "X-Ray Fluorescence" - they work by firing high(ish)-energy X-rays at a sample, and reading the (lower-energy) X-rays that the sample re-emits. I guess you could argue that they're not technically "radioactive", but X-rays are still ionizing radiation, the kind that damages DNA.
You are absolutely right @-jeffB I was looking at this : https://www.alibaba.co.uk/product-d...trysiteuk.normal_offer.d_image.1949215bWJMzdV Taking a look at the hand held ones such as the one in my local pawn shop advertised, and their prices, I am not so sure I would trust such a cheap instrument. I guess if you are testing something with a big lump of copper in the middle it would work but if you wanted a super accurate reading to determine precise composition it might not.
Okay, this is intriguing. That's a clear copy of this, which is a well-known and well-respected desktop XRF system - and sells for about $20K new. But when I search on the machine name, most of the "shopping" results are from Alibaba in the $500-600 range! There's certainly room to make XRF systems cheaper. With economies of scale, I'm sure you could manufacture a reasonable one and sell it somewhere in the lower four figures. $600, though? Seems very fishy. But... there was a similar situation with thermal cameras ten or fifteen years ago, where one manufacturer (FLIR) had the lion's share of the market, the very lowest-end system was a couple of thousand dollars, and the better ones quickly ran into five figures. A couple of manufacturers found ways around FLIR's patents, Chinese manufacturers ramped up production, and now you can get a good thermal camera for a few hundred dollars. Now you've got my attention. I'm going to see if I can find any evidence that these $600 Alibaba systems are actually real. If they are, I'm so in!
Oh, and those systems that @Dafydd and I linked have a cover that blocks the X-rays while they're running. The video appears to show the shop guy running a similar system with no cover. Yeah, it's not a strong X-ray source, but still not a choice I'd make.
Just from personal experience with Chinese knock offs….. Years back I wanted to polish the pontoons on my boat before I sold it. I went to Harbor Freight and bought a Chinese angle polisher. Looked great all spiffy and new out of the box…. Twenty minutes of polishing and the brushes were gone. So I bought another (they were cheap) and got the same result. And of course there is no place to buy replacement brushes for a Chinese polisher so they both went into the garbage. I broke down and bought a Makita that I still have to this day……. I rather believe that a similar result would ensue with a cut rate Chinese knock off XRF machine.
If anyone could recommend one, I'm in too. I'm not too concerned about Chinese knockoffs because half of the luxury goods we buy and most of our electronics are made in China anyway. They work on large quantities and low margins. I'm writing this post on a Dell Laptop I've had for several years and it was made in China. I was in China for a wedding in 2018 and met a high ranking member of government and he told me through an interpreter " with respect, Napoleon had it right about you British, you are a nation of shopkeepers. We don't understand why you buy all this stuff from us when you could make it yourself but we aren't complaining!". I do agree with @Randy Abercrombie that you can buy junk and I've had the odd misfortune and I bought a pack of drills last year that hadn't been heat treated and wore out immediately. No point buying another pack because the same thing would have happened. With a piece of kit like the XRF machine it would be best to get an endorsement from a user.
