fake gold

Welcome to the Precious Metals Bug Forums

Welcome to the PMBug forums - a watering hole for folks interested in gold, silver, precious metals, sound money, investing, market and economic news, central bank monetary policies, politics and more.

Why not register an account and join the discussions? When you register an account and log in, you may enjoy additional benefits including no Google ads, market data/charts, access to trade/barter with the community and much more. Registering an account is free - you have nothing to lose!

Yeah they seem to be getting better all the time. Of course I always seem to run into morons on other sites who insist that the only coin you should buy is the AGE as there are no quality fakes around. Even when you post links like that they stick their head in the sand.
 
...

Jay, that is a very good video. I did see it elsewhere recently.

Note that the FACE is very hard to get right on a fake. That is one sign. Also, if the coin is tungsten, it will not ring right (when dropped from, say, 1 cm over a granite counter-top).

At some point I may consider buying a more sophisticated metal analyzer. But for now, careful examination, a 0.1 gm scale and another AGE close by are probably enough. *


* Subject to change at a moment's notice...
 
Whenever this subject pops up, I always feel blessed to have an X-ray fluoroscope at my immediate disposal. I've used it several times for my LCS when he had a client challenge the quality of smaller bars in a deal. Although the penetration isn't enough for large bars, it is enough for smaller bars and coins, making it a great tool when a client of his is afraid to buy a numismatic for fear that it may be a fake or not gold. He always tosses me a couple rounds for the trouble.

I once did forty quarter ounce gold eagles that were kind of beat up, which is very, very unusual, seeing that most people baby their eagles and keep them in the freaking tubes or in individual caps. For whatever reason, whoever sold these babies to him brought them in a very small Crown Royal bag loose like a sack of dimes and they were all banged up. He was selling them at a premium that was significantly lower than usual so it was a good deal for the buyer, but he was suspicious as hell. My guy called me and I came down the next afternoon and shot the whole lot of rounds. They were exactly on point. The buyer was impressed as hell, because I used his "lucky" gold piece he wore around his neck to calibrate with, a quarter ounce gold eagle in a bezel.

Most large scrap yards have a Niton gun [or similar] that can be used to shoot a coin/round to see if it is real. Remember though, it can only shoot so deep. It is good for the smaller rounds and bars, like up to one ouncers.
 
ancona said:
Whenever this subject pops up, I always feel blessed to have an X-ray fluoroscope at my immediate disposal. I've used it several times for my LCS when he had a client challenge the quality of smaller bars in a deal. Although the penetration isn't enough for large bars, it is enough for smaller bars and coins, making it a great tool when a client of his is afraid to buy a numismatic for fear that it may be a fake or not gold. He always tosses me a couple rounds for the trouble.

I once did forty quarter ounce gold eagles that were kind of beat up, which is very, very unusual, seeing that most people baby their eagles and keep them in the freaking tubes or in individual caps. For whatever reason, whoever sold these babies to him brought them in a very small Crown Royal bag loose like a sack of dimes and they were all banged up. He was selling them at a premium that was significantly lower than usual so it was a good deal for the buyer, but he was suspicious as hell. My guy called me and I came down the next afternoon and shot the whole lot of rounds. They were exactly on point. The buyer was impressed as hell, because I used his "lucky" gold piece he wore around his neck to calibrate with, a quarter ounce gold eagle in a bezel.

Most large scrap yards have a Niton gun [or similar] that can be used to shoot a coin/round to see if it is real. Remember though, it can only shoot so deep. It is good for the smaller rounds and bars, like up to one ouncers.
Click to expand...

I was watching those morons on hard core pawn (not pawn stars but a horrible knock off of it) and they had one of those guns to see if a samurai sword was real, they shot it and it showed like 96% iron, 2% carbon, then trace amounts of nickel, manganese, chromium, copper, etc. So these geniuses say "Nope, it's mostly iron not steel, so we're not interested!" :rotflmbo:
 
Hi Esker, welcome to the forum. :wave:

Your Gold Lock tester looks pretty neat. I couldn't find anywhere on your site where you mention the size of the tester (or what coins fit inside it).

I was really surprised to see your links page promote someone trying to sell fake gold eagles. Are you affiliated with them? Sell the problem and the solution?
 
Hi PM,

Thank you for looking at my creation. It took a lot of work to get where it is.

Size of the scanner. I'm so close to the trees I couldn't see the forest. I'll add that to my website.

No, I'm not affiliated with anyone selling fakes...well, I am affiliated with 'spy-coins'. They make my hollow coins for demonstration purposes. They can machine two gold coins, insert a piece of tungsten and put it back together. I'm selling hollow coins made out of $1 and they look exactly the same as a real $1 with the naked eye. If I had a fake gold coin made it would be stamped with "FAKE."

So how do I get this idea out there so people can see it? I'm an engineer and not a marketer. Do you think it would be worthwhile to advertise on this site? I'd also be willing to give advise to whoever on how to test for fakes. My invention has its limitations and other tests should also be performed.

Thank you,

Esker
 
Last edited:
Hey Esker

looked at your website, neat idea.
Good luck with the marketing .....

still a bit confused as to what magnetism / diamagnetism / paramagnetism is but thats no reflection on you :flushed:
If diamagnetic materials are repulsed, then is iron magnetic when n/s and diamagnetic when n/n or s/s ?


Whats your experience with gold mining in your neck of the woods ?
 
RB,

Good question - Iron is ferromagnetic. I think nickel is also. This means it is strongly attracted to magnets and can be permanently magnetized. A good and useful example of diamagnetism is to take a silver dollar and hold it above a rare earth magnet. It will resist being moved across it. If it is one of those stainless steel fake dollars which is not magnetic there will be no resistance. You can also hang a magnet on a string and dangle it over the coins. Silver and gold will tend to repulse the magnet. A lump of tungsten (paramagnetic) will be attracted to the magnet. I have plans to make a table top apparatus to sell to the public that does this but haven't gotten to it yet.

What makes the coin scanner tick; eddy currents are generated in the gold and tungsten but they are in opposite directions and this is what makes the pattern/image on the nickel impregnated mylar.

I grew up with a gold pan in Alaska. I've never done it large scale. My wife grew up on a large gold mine on the middle fork of the Chena River (Van Curler Bar) and she has a lot of experience. Enough experience that she won't let me quit my nice oil field job to go mining. More people loose money than make it. We lived in Nome for awhile and it seemed like gold was everywhere but not really economical to mine small scale at $300 an ounce. Nome is also an expensive place to live. Right now were in Nikiski and there were some huge gold mines in Turnagain Pass. In the 20's and 30's mining technology was limited to where they could get water. There are some high ridges above the mines that can't be staked because they are in the park and they were never worked because the technology didn't exist.. I plan to walk a grid with my metal detector above the mines and see what I can find. All the old timers tell me that the big stuff is on the ridges and can be close to the surface. I'm getting too old to work in the cold placer water.. and it is really hard work. I've looked at buying/staking a claim but the ones close to me are on Federal land and I just can't let go of $80K for something the Feds can shut down anytime without notice. You can only mine certain days of the year due to regulation and there is a lot of snow. When you do mine you might get an ounce a day. Not bad but it is hard physical work.

I need to make a glossary page with links to WIKI explaining the different scientific terms. I also want to post videos with demonstrations; sometimes that's easier for people to understand.
 
Last edited:
'magnetism' seems to be a much bigger subject than the simple N/S field that we saw in the old iron filings jobbie we did at school.
Apparently even on a simple magnet there are two south and two north poles and how does an entire spinning planet flip its magnetic field ?

With regard to your location and joint experiences in those cold northern goldfields, its a delight to encounter the 'real deal' and not some dreaming incomer.

What were your and your wife's experiences growing up in this environment and does your dream have you mining your own stake as a retirement plan ?
 
I don't think I will stake a claim. Too expensive and risky. I'll just play on the recreational lands. They are just as rich or more so than staked claims. They reason they aren't staked is because the government won't allow it.

In Alaska there is gold almost everywhere. My brother and I would always be panning the streams looking for color. Usually we only find a few small flakes but it was fun. My wife grew up on a large remote placer gold mine. There are pictures of her, her mother and sister cleaning large gold pans pilled full of little nuggets. It looks like a lot of money but when you realize how much dirt had to be moved and the cost of fuel, labor and permits; the owners of the mine might have broke even.
 
Esker said:
...
So how do I get this idea out there so people can see it?
Click to expand...

YouTube videos would be helpful.

Esker said:
...
Do you think it would be worthwhile to advertise on this site?
Click to expand...

It couldn't hurt, but pmbug.com occupies a small, cozy corner of the internets. There are other sites that get much more traffic (and correspondingly charge more for advertising).
 
Last edited:
Esker, you made me laugh out loud! I had a crazy girlfriend about thirty odd years ago when I first left home. She talked me in to a trip to visit her older sister in Central California where there were a few old time gold mines back in the day. Anyhow, her sister liked to hike way back up the streams and pan for gold. Well, we got the bug a little bit and went up ever day we were there for hours on end. We saw a lot of color all right and got so excited. At the end of it all we had exactly eleven grams. Gold was something like 400 an ounce in '82, so for the approximately eighty hours we put in between us, and all the aches and bruises, we came away with about a hundred fifty in gold dust. We had a hell of a good time, saw some snakes, a bobcat or two and did some skinny dipping, but we never got rich. I recall her sister found a nugget or two, but she always kept her finds, and put then in a jelly jar. She maybe had an ounce and a half all together.
 
Not everything that shines is gold, if you are going to invest in gold you should be careful. Investing in the precious metal will safeguard your savings.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom