Does anyone knew about fake bullion gold filled with Tungsten? Any of you see Canada Maple Leaf, South Africa Krugerrand, Malaysia Kijang, Australia Nugget, American Eagles or any other bullion which is spotted filled with Tungsten? A video in YouTube showing how gold bar filled with Tungsten make me wonder if any of the bullion gold coin I buy are fake? Even a bank cannot spot Tungsten gold and I buy my bullion mostly from bank. I check the sound of my gold against other metal and it sound OK to me since I am not a gold expert.
This YouTube video been uploaded by wolframgold. People says this video produced by ProSieben TV in Germany is 10 years old. Its started with ProSieben TV reported how gold bar made at a gold refinery; WC Heraeus in Hanau, Germany. The pure gold must be 1200 degrees hot so it can flow properly. The hot gold then get cool down with water. The gold can be touch after 30 seconds in water. Then the gold will get its imprint of origin and serial number. At the end of the video, the head of the refinery, Wilfried Horner who had work for 30 years there show us tungsten gold spotted by an employee with his eyes. The gold bar with tungsten in it is said bought in a bank.
To any reader who still doesn't knew anything about tungsten; tungsten is one element that has just about the same density as gold. Alloying gold with tungsten would not work for several reasons but a coin with a tungsten center and gold all around it could not be detected as counterfeit by density measurement alone. Most of bank only check the density of the gold when they receive it from seller. Its density, similar to that of gold, allows tungsten to be used in jewelry as an alternative to gold or platinum. Tungsten's resistance to high temperatures and its strength in alloys made it an important raw material for the weaponry industry.
Photo by Wikipedia: wolframiteThe name "tungsten" (from the Nordic tung sten, meaning "heavy stone") is used in English, French, and many other languages as the name of the element. Tungsten was the old Swedish name for the mineral scheelite. The other name "wolfram" (or "volfram"), used for example in most European (especially Germanic and Slavic) languages, is derived from the mineral wolframite, and this is also the origin of its chemical symbol, W.[5] The name "wolframite" is derived from German "wolf rahm" ("wolf soot" or "wolf cream"), the name given to tungsten by Johan Gottschalk Wallerius in 1747.
I check if there is any way to test for tungsten gold. Some suggested to check the gold electric conductivity with Ohmmeter. An ohmmeter is an electrical instrument that measures electrical resistance, the opposition to an electric current. Tungsten is way way harder than gold so another test is by pushing a pointy steel thing into the coin. If the coin is just gold plated tungsten then the point would penetrate a very short distance and make nothing more than a tiny pin point dent. If the coin was actually gold you would be able to make a large dent in the surface. An automatic center punch would work well I would think. The only problem is that all your coins would then have a noticeable dent in them. If you only care about bullion value then I suppose the dent wouldn't matter, but for a collector this test would be unacceptable.
Source: Wikipedia, Kitco.com
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