To circle back...and some food for thought...
We all know the risks in paper/fiat. Every such asset is someone else's liability. The laws are shifting, in favor of the (connected) debtor - to marginalize the asset-holder, the creditor.
We all know of the book The Great Taking. Webb documents how commercial law is changing, creating a new ownership class - "beneficial" owners, as opposed to secured owners.
We know of bail-ins that can now legally be imposed on bank depositors. Remember how the law was wiped away, with Chrysler LLC's preferred bondholders?
Well, there's a moar elemental danger with stacking.
Theft by fraud.
I got burned. BIG time - by Silver standards. Sixty ounces of POT METAL.
I bought this back 14 years ago. First I bought a couple of hundred-ounce bars, back in the GFC days, because, if you remember, there was a shortage of gold. And silver, in desired form.
So I bought them, but didn't want to keep them that way. A hundred ounces is useless, except to industry. I got sixty plastic-packaged 1-oz bars.
Now, at the time, I was a n00b to stacking. And in fairness, I'll point out that the shop also gave me a few 10-oz bars to round up the difference, from the 100-oz I was selling.
But I kept those one-ounce bars, bottom of my boat-wreck.
With talk of taxing PMs as investment - excepting Constitutional U.S. Mint issued denominated currencies - I thought it was a good time to get rid of pretty bars for scrap rounds.
So I took the six plastic sheets of ten in, to sell them.
My guy tested them - as he always does. It didn't move the needle (the electronic bar). Not set for 999; not set for 90; not set for 80-percent.
Nothing reading at all. He weighed it; it was almost 20 percent over an ounce.
No sale. We have a metal recycler in town with a complex metal-composition tool; my bullion guy sent me over.
Pacific Recycling tells me, it's a copper-zinc alloy, with a bit of iron. A PLATING that's less than a percent silver on the face. We ground the plating off a corner, and there it is - the alloy looks like copper.
Screwed on 60 ounces. At current prices, the loss is $2k. I can deal with it, but I don't like to be played for a fool.
I bought them before I moved to Montucky. My current guy, tests everything - and offers to test stuff he sells. I have no doubt what I buy there is real.
But, back then...I didn't know the tools. My current guy says the electronic tester (for silver) wasn't even commonplace in 2012.
What IS commonplace, is the fraud. Little did I know...the mint, World Treasures Mint, has been well known and talked to death on Reddit for its fraud. There's a deceptive ad running, even now, on Flea Bay by fraudster JulianCoin.
www.ebay.com/itm/186066074390
You know he's a fraud when you read the glowing feedback by bots. That damn bar he marks NOT 9999 silver, is priced much higher than actual silver.
My own frauds look similar, but do not have the circular border on the image. Seems the World Treasures Mint uses various faces of US coins, copies them, and pastes them on bars. My set of copper bars have an indian head, but no round border. Those with the borders (there are several examples online) are a bit more obvious to spot as copies of coins.
No matter. I looked at those bars for over a decade, and never knew.
FWIW, on the discussed frauds by WTM, they say - and illustrate - that on the back, it says "In Clad We Trust." Well, I took out the jewelry magnifier, and my own say, clearly, "In God We Trust." Apparently the WTM Chin were upping their game, when they cranked out mine.
Scrap value for these things, based on copper prices, is about $5. So with the loss I've already taken, and $5 to have them tested at Pacific, I got nuffin.