If it was a smaller private Mint I would be a bit more forgiving but this is the National Mint of a major country.
While this is definitely dishonest, I never bought Chinese bullion anyway cuz even if they mark it 30g, they sell it for the usual 1 troy oz price, so you only end up losing. Also why even give your money to a country like China!!
I think a lot of people think the premium for pandas makes up any sort of shortage in silver. But that’s missing the point. The point is that the Chinese Mint and by extension the Chinese government is guaranteeing something that is false which is that the Pandas are 1oz/30g depending on date. If someone took 1000x Chinese silver Pandas and melted them all down and then poured it all into a single silver bar that was identified as a 1000oz bar..that bar wouldn’t even meet the LBMA (London Bullion Market Association) Good Delivery Bar standards because it would be about a quarter kilogram underweight. I don’t have an XRF machine but I would not be surprised if the .999 fine Chinese Pandas were 98% or something. Anything they can do to make money at the expense of quality and integrity. No other country has done that from what I’ve tested. Not even Somalia which is known to be one of the most corrupt countries on Earth. I mean it’s way up there a few spots behind North Korea.
Has he done that ? How much silver should have have....what did he pay for ? And is his digital scale accurate ?
There's a moral to the story. DON'T BUY CHINESE PANDAS! Why would anyone want to buy coins minted by the ChiComs anyway? I can think of a ton of reasons why to not buy them.
I can't believe they are underweight and deliberately so. It would kill their future business. Fudging the weight is so easy to verify it doesn't make sense. We must be missing an explanation.......
But it is!! That’s why people need to know this! I tested not 1, not 2, but 40 pandas! Every single one of them was underweight. Now if it was only 1 or 2 pandas out of 40 I would’ve given the Chinese Mint the benefit of the doubt and assumed maybe it was just a bad batch. But 40 out of 40 underweight coins is not an accident or an exception. The lightest weighed 29.8g and the heaviest weighed 31.09g. Most of them averaged out at around 31.0g. Which is still 1/10th of a gram underweight per coin. Any Mint worth their salt can mint coins/bullion to accuracy within a fraction of a gram unless you start getting into very large sizes like 100oz or 1000oz bars. But these bullion coins are only 31.1g so for the Chinese government to be off up to 1 full gram on some of them smells like conspiracy to me. I truly believe the Chinese government is shaving fractions of a gram off each Panda and when you multiply it by millions of pandas a year they are netting a significant amount of profit in silver. Keep in mind that every other country that I tested was slightly to moderately overweight. That makes sense considering most nations (all of them except China) put a little bit of extra silver to guarantee that in the event of a naturally underweight coin they do not fall short of 1 troy oz. It makes a lot of sense considering the government of that country is guaranteeing the weight as 1 full troy oz and not a flea’s weight less.
I’ve tested a couple of Russian St. George’s and from my small testing sample the Russian ones are fair weight.
1). Each Chinese Panda should be at the very least 31.1 grams and not a grain less. Every other nation’s bullion weighs between 31.2g-31.6g. 2). I assure you my scales are indeed accurate. If they weren’t then other national bullion coins would be showing underweight too. But only the Chinese Pandas are underweight. For example while writing this post I just put an American Silver Eagle on my scale and it comes out at 31.26 grams. That is acceptable. It’s slightly overweight but every country (except China) puts a tiny bit extra silver because they want to make sure that something the US Mint is guaranteeing as 1 troy oz isn’t even a milligram under that.
Just wanted to follow up my last reply. I measured the other dimensions (length, width, diameter) and all of those are exactly what they are officially designated to be. This tells us that by design the coins are underweight. You can only turn 1oz of .999 silver into a certain number of shapes and sizes due to only having a specific amount of material. You can only make your coin so big before you run out of metal. If you know what I mean? Like if I had 1 oz of .999 silver I couldn’t make a coin 1ft long and 1ft wide because I don’t have enough silver to do so. What China is doing is similar but reversed in that they’re intentionally making the measurements of the Panda smaller than a full troy oz and they do it in a less noticeable way. They know that they don’t need a full troy oz of silver to make the pandas the right size. They need a little bit less and that little bit less multiplied by millions of pandas is huge profits. Here is something else I wanted to show you. If individuals made profits doing things like this can you imagine a country doing it on a massive scale? China isn’t exactly known as the most trustworthy of nations.
Actually back in 2015 (when I bought the coin in the picture) the Chinese were advertising them as containing 1 full troy ounce. It was in 2016 when they switched to 30g.
I think most people buy them because they think pandas are cute. I also understand as “collectibles” they’ll sell for more than 1 troy oz of bullion silver. That’s not what I have a problem with though. I have a problem with the Chinese Mint (and Chinese government by definition) is advertising them as 1 full troy oz when they are not. My guess is only the very best struck pandas minted under ideal conditions ends up containing 1 full troy oz. But unlike every other nation they don’t add a tiny bit extra to ensure that what the government is saying is no less than 1 full troy oz is not a grain less. Yes it costs all these governments extra money to buy the extra silver to make that guarantee but if all the other nations are doing it so should China. That’s just what is required when authenticating precious metals as a national mint. This isn’t some small time unknown bullion dealer. But as I said I think this is deliberate due to how much money it saves them on silver.
I’m very interested in this too! If anyone has gold Chinese bullion I would be thrilled to see what the weights come out as. Especially considering Gold is a lot more expensive so even minor deductions of weight add up fast. Taking 1/2 a gram off a gold Panda is shaving $30 in gold from each. Multiplied by hundreds of thousands.
Yup! It’s the Bavarian Mint. I have full trust in the Bavarian Mint because it’s a Mint run by a stable, democratic, transparent, first world nation. Germany. If it was minted in Somalia I might be a bit more cautious. Same with the Philharmonics.
Could it be a quality control problem? Assuming somewhere in the production of planchets something got out of calibration and slightly thin blanks were struck, some weighing device drifted a bit, etc? It's hard to believe this has never been noticed and reported if it is their standard practice.