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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

I didn’t realize there were banks that would buy gold bars from a random 18 year old.

In multiple transactions, and they called him and asked whether he had more of it. (“Das Geldinstitut soll ihn sogar zwischendurch angerufen und gefragt haben, ob er nicht noch mehr habe.”)

That makes it look like and inside job to me. Alternatively, they must have paid significantly below market value.

finding that amount of gold bars is incredibly hard. People usually respond "comex & london" has gold bars? I dare say 30% are fake, numerous occasions where gold bars stored in the vault are fake.

In light of this week’s banking collapse precipitated by (among other things) lost confidence, I’ll ask:

To what extent does it matter that some of the bars in the vault are fake if everyone has confidence they’re real?

Also it seems like anyone who might inadvertently acquired some in lieu of the real thing & suspect the fraud down the line, they really have little incentive to cut the bar in half to find out. Best not to know.

It doesn't matter, as long as no one notices. You could say the same about counterfeit anything.

It doesn't matter as long as you're not the one holding the bag when it gets discovered and something negative happens

At some point someone will need to melt it down to use for industry, or for another purpose, or form. Say a comex bar, or smaller bars, or for alloying, whatever.

Anyone who thinks they might be that person, or thinks they might sell to that person, certainly cares! They’re the ones who will suffer the consequences of the fraud.

One example of a use that requires real gold is the manufacture of gold plated tungsten.

If he made 300k, those were probably 100g bars or smaller, not giant movie vault gold bars.

> giant movie vault gold bars.

Also called "Good Delivery Bars", typically 400oz.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Delivery

Fort Knox is audited regularly, and in 1974 cogress sent a delegation to verify it. One can easily imagine nefarious actors siphoning some off; how many tungsten bars are in there? They’d have to test every bar to know for sure. Has this been done?

https://www.usmint.gov/learn/history/historical-documents/in...

There are some great historical nuggets in that archive, I liked this appeal to people to stop hoarding pennies and get them back into circulation.

> Creating a shortage where it does not exist can adversely affect every public spirited citizen, taxpayer and conservator of the earth’s resources. It is inflationary should merchants start to round off sales to the next nickel due to lack of pennies to make change.

> Again, I’d like to emphasize. There are plenty of pennies. But they are in the wrong places.

> It is estimated that over 30 billion pennies are in circulation—doing the job for which they were intended. Somewhere in this vast country of ours, however, in excess of 30 billion pennies are in hiding. These are the pennies I’m looking for. They are in dresser drawers, shoe boxes, pickle jars; most anyplace you can think of that will get them out of pocket and out of sight. They are unwanted, unused and unappreciated.

https://www.usmint.gov/learn/history/historical-documents/mi...

I have to laugh though - it would be trivial for someone in the executive hierarchy there to walk off with them and cover it up. The whole thing is intentionally opaque.

And even better - that gold was mostly gold seized by the gov’t from private citizens when private ownership of gold was banned and all circulating coinage and other gold was seized!

It truly is an attractive nuisance for the corrupt.

No, it is not audited regularly.

I can't speak for gold, but in 1942 the Treasury lent 14,700 tons of silver to the Manhattan project; they only lost about 3-4 kg of it.

You can't fool an honest man.

Yes you can. Sell him something fake at a real item's fair price.

Yes but if it's a fair price there's every chance he'll buy from some other guy selling the real deal.

Now if you definitely (and you're taking a risk with the shenanigans you need to go through to get/setup this fake item so you want to get paid) want to sell it you need to undercut the fair price. How can you explain a low price? Well, the easy way is to convince the mark that either the two of you are in on a scam together or that the mark is the con.

Personally I don't really agree with that statement, "You can't fool an honest man." but I can see the logic that drives it. Generally it seems like the honest people who get scammed are the ones who are trying to help someone which makes the people running these scams see even more pathetic.

Gold

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