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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Blaubart, post: 1778454, member: 37498&quot;]If a .999 round sticks to a magnet like it&#039;s made of iron, you can be sure it&#039;s a fake regardless of wether or not you have a genuine .999 round to compare it to.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Likewise, if a strong magnet has no effect on it whatsoever, then it&#039;s no good.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>If it passes both tests mentioned above, you can compare it with a known good sample with a magnet test, but I wouldn&#039;t rely solely on a magnet test for a &quot;pass&quot;.&nbsp; If it passes, then I move on to other testing methods.&nbsp; Depending on the source, I might use several different methods on site, or I might not test at all until I get home.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>I have an uncle who has about a hundred silver rounds and he was showing them to me one evening last summer.&nbsp; We got to talking about the magnet test and I told him I had a magnet in the car and I&#039;d be happy to show him how it worked.&nbsp;&nbsp; I didn&#039;t want to scratch them, so I passed it within an inch or two over the rounds he had laid out on the table just to show him how it would pull on them a little.&nbsp; When I did, two of the rounds jumped up and stuck to the magnet.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>While a magnet test doesn&#039;t offer a definitive pass, it can detect some fakes with absolute certainty.&nbsp; After seeing how quick and simple the magnet test is, my uncle was kicking himself in the rear for not knowing about it earlier.&nbsp; The good news is he bought most of these rounds back when silver was around $5 an ounce, so the cost of a good magnet would have been more than he lost by not detecting these two fakes.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>All that being said, the magnet test is not quite as simple when testing 90% silver and especially sterling silver.&nbsp; Sterling silver is usually 92.5% silver and the other 7.5% is typically some sort of copper alloy.&nbsp; There are proprietary blends out there that supposedly offer better resistance to tarnishing, or increase the strength of the item.&nbsp; But the only thing it must contain in order to be called sterling silver in the US is 92.5% silver.&nbsp; The other 7.5% could be iron and I have found some sterling silver jewelry that stuck to a magnet, but passed all other tests.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>90% silver is a little more of a grey area.&nbsp; If a 90% silver coin sticks to a magnet, of course it&#039;s bad, but it&#039;s much harder to detect the pull that the magnet exerts on the coin as the coin moves across the magnet or vice versa.&nbsp; This is especially true with dimes and quarters.&nbsp; Silver dollars are about the only coins I send down my magnet slide to test, and I have a fake that will fool most people in a magnet test if they don&#039;t test it alongside a known good sample.&nbsp; But if you send them both down the slide at the same time, the fake slides down a little faster than the real thing.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>The bottom line is simple: It is prudent to use multiple methods to test bullion.&nbsp; Use each test for what it is good for.&nbsp; A magnet test is good at quickly detecting cheap fakes that contain ferrous metals.&nbsp; But like any other method out there, do not use it as the only test you employ to confirm bullion.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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