Bimetallic

Hi all – There's been quite a bit of media coverage of Costco selling PAMP bars online. One article claimed that the price sometimes falls under spot. They're a major discount warehouse-style retailer in the US.
Limit of two bars. They keep selling out apparently. They're 1 oz Lady Fortuna bars. Online only.
When I first heard this I thought their margins must be razor thin – retailers are used to much greater markups than bullion dealers most of the time (how dealers make it work is still a mystery to me, @LawrenceChard). So it makes sense if they are indeed falling under spot occasionally – I doubt their website supports the constant real-time price updates tracking a spot price and other variables, but who knows.
The coverage is weird. It's like buying a gold bar is unheard of, like who would buy one online, and with incompetent price comparisons. And what does this mean?
"APMEX and JM Bullion sell gold by weight, quantity and price."
By price? How do you sell something by price? Anyway, the reporters are all struggling to describe a market we take for granted. It reminds me of the recurring lesson that when the media reports on something you know a lot about, you notice severe errors. Depending on the rate, it implies they're just as bad at other topics...

Black and gold.... now that’s one sexy looking coin! 

Metal composition for this ‘Toonie’ as it is known in Canada, is standard,  except for the black nickel outer ring. Presumably the ‘gold’ centre is nickel- brass. The black represents a black arm band for QEII. Not sure it’s supposed to be ‘sexy’!🤔
Toonies ($2 coins)  replaced the $2 Bank notes in 1996….
Just found out that centre (gold) Is actually aluminium bronze - 92% copper, 6% aluminium, 2% nickel!
 

Hi all – There's been quite a bit of media coverage of Costco selling PAMP bars online. One article claimed that the price sometimes falls under spot. They're a major discount warehouse-style retailer in the US.
Limit of two bars. They keep selling out apparently. They're 1 oz Lady Fortuna bars. Online only.
When I first heard this I thought their margins must be razor thin – retailers are used to much greater markups than bullion dealers most of the time (how dealers make it work is still a mystery to me, @LawrenceChard). So it makes sense if they are indeed falling under spot occasionally – I doubt their website supports the constant real-time price updates tracking a spot price and other variables, but who knows.
The coverage is weird. It's like buying a gold bar is unheard of, like who would buy one online, and with incompetent price comparisons. And what does this mean?
"APMEX and JM Bullion sell gold by weight, quantity and price."
By price? How do you sell something by price? Anyway, the reporters are all struggling to describe a market we take for granted. It reminds me of the recurring lesson that when the media reports on something you know a lot about, you notice severe errors. Depending on the rate, it implies they're just as bad at other topics...

Nah man, I'm not buying it then. You keep making excuses to hide what you told him, and I have to assume there's a reason for that. If you're the one who first used the word "sucker" in the convo, for example, then his reply would be interpreted very differently. Like if you said "I'd have to be a sucker to pay that price..." and he replied joking about you being a sucker, that's very different. I have no idea what happened – that's just one easy to imagine possibility. There's no point trashing a seller by quoting only one side of an exchange, and we'd have to be suckers to fall for one-sided reports.

It's also possible that the difference in thickness, if there is one, is due to the rim only. Can you tell if the relief is deeper?
I'd clean the tarnish off for sure. The aluminum foil and baking soda method works extremely well for this type of tarnish, and is harmless to the coin, unlike silver dips and polishes. It's also dirt cheap.
After cleaning, I'd securely store the coins so that they never tarnish again. Do you know how they got exposed to air? Were they in tubes? It's unusual for bullion to tarnish when stored in tight tubes. If I leave coins in flips, which are not sealed, and throw them in a sock drawer, they'll tarnish in two months or so. Hard lesson. So I don't do that anymore – I keep them all in Ziploc snack bags (smaller than sandwich bags), or tubes. I also throw anti-tarnish tabs and strips into the bags and tubes. They're cheap, and they absorb the sulfur in the air.

1. Are you sure the loose coin and carded coin are the exact same product? The only carded RCM coins I've seen are their special 99999 fine gold, not their normal 9999 fine grade. That's five nines vs four nines. Regular Maples are four nines. RCM is the only mint in the world that even offers five nines gold. Those always sell for an extra premium.
2. There's an interesting potential unintended consequence of moving toward carded gold, which is most common with bars. It makes fraud easier, since people are no longer interacting with their bullion directly if it's sealed in a plastic bubble in a card. This reduces the available counterfeit testing methods. I think Sigma is supposed to work, but not any other method like XRF, ultrasound, specific gravity, and simple measurements and mass become more difficult.
If counterfeits in cards blows up in the future as a big issue, they'll probably lose their premium and any sense of value added. Just a possibility to keep in mind. It would spark a return to direct reality kind of movement, and dealers and buyers will cut the plastic first thing.

1. Are you sure the loose coin and carded coin are the exact same product? The only carded RCM coins I've seen are their special 99999 fine gold, not their normal 9999 fine grade. That's five nines vs four nines. Regular Maples are four nines. RCM is the only mint in the world that even offers five nines gold. Those always sell for an extra premium.
2. There's an interesting potential unintended consequence of moving toward carded gold, which is most common with bars. It makes fraud easier, since people are no longer interacting with their bullion directly if it's sealed in a plastic bubble in a card. This reduces the available counterfeit testing methods. I think Sigma is supposed to work, but not any other method like XRF, ultrasound, specific gravity, and simple measurements and mass become more difficult.
If counterfeits in cards blows up in the future as a big issue, they'll probably lose their premium and any sense of value added. Just a possibility to keep in mind. It would spark a return to direct reality kind of movement, and dealers and buyers will cut the plastic first thing.

1. Are you sure the loose coin and carded coin are the exact same product? The only carded RCM coins I've seen are their special 99999 fine gold, not their normal 9999 fine grade. That's five nines vs four nines. Regular Maples are four nines. RCM is the only mint in the world that even offers five nines gold. Those always sell for an extra premium.
2. There's an interesting potential unintended consequence of moving toward carded gold, which is most common with bars. It makes fraud easier, since people are no longer interacting with their bullion directly if it's sealed in a plastic bubble in a card. This reduces the available counterfeit testing methods. I think Sigma is supposed to work, but not any other method like XRF, ultrasound, specific gravity, and simple measurements and mass become more difficult.
If counterfeits in cards blows up in the future as a big issue, they'll probably lose their premium and any sense of value added. Just a possibility to keep in mind. It would spark a return to direct reality kind of movement, and dealers and buyers will cut the plastic first thing.

1. Are you sure the loose coin and carded coin are the exact same product? The only carded RCM coins I've seen are their special 99999 fine gold, not their normal 9999 fine grade. That's five nines vs four nines. Regular Maples are four nines. RCM is the only mint in the world that even offers five nines gold. Those always sell for an extra premium.
2. There's an interesting potential unintended consequence of moving toward carded gold, which is most common with bars. It makes fraud easier, since people are no longer interacting with their bullion directly if it's sealed in a plastic bubble in a card. This reduces the available counterfeit testing methods. I think Sigma is supposed to work, but not any other method like XRF, ultrasound, specific gravity, and simple measurements and mass become more difficult.
If counterfeits in cards blows up in the future as a big issue, they'll probably lose their premium and any sense of value added. Just a possibility to keep in mind. It would spark a return to direct reality kind of movement, and dealers and buyers will cut the plastic first thing.

If you have to post the value on the package, I would misdirect on the contents to deter thieves. The contents should be implied as something hard to sell, fence, etc., unlike bullion or jewelry. In the US all of the online dealers label their shipments as coming from fictitious merchants like Joe's Machine Parts, M&J Bearings, etc., or just a generic "Fulfillment" followed by an address.
But given the value declaration, the fiction should be something like Nova Biotech, Star Electronics, Chavez Labs, etc. High tech that explains the value, but isn't going to be liquid financially, no one to sell it to.

If you have to post the value on the package, I would misdirect on the contents to deter thieves. The contents should be implied as something hard to sell, fence, etc., unlike bullion or jewelry. In the US all of the online dealers label their shipments as coming from fictitious merchants like Joe's Machine Parts, M&J Bearings, etc., or just a generic "Fulfillment" followed by an address.
But given the value declaration, the fiction should be something like Nova Biotech, Star Electronics, Chavez Labs, etc. High tech that explains the value, but isn't going to be liquid financially, no one to sell it to.

If you have to post the value on the package, I would misdirect on the contents to deter thieves. The contents should be implied as something hard to sell, fence, etc., unlike bullion or jewelry. In the US all of the online dealers label their shipments as coming from fictitious merchants like Joe's Machine Parts, M&J Bearings, etc., or just a generic "Fulfillment" followed by an address.
But given the value declaration, the fiction should be something like Nova Biotech, Star Electronics, Chavez Labs, etc. High tech that explains the value, but isn't going to be liquid financially, no one to sell it to.

Does the Royal Mail have a monopoly in the UK? I know they were privatized some years ago, but there are many forms of privatization, including ones where there is still a coercive (government-enforced) monopoly. How do they get away with such brazen employee theft? Do their employees still have the artificial level of job security they had before the privatization? I thought you lot had CCTV everywhere these days.
I realize the RM can't have a monopoly on international package shipments, but national monopoly mail carriers often use their monopolies on letter mail to offer lower prices for package shipments than private carriers can offer (the mail monopolies have nearly fixed route costs already, and can throw packages onto the routes for very little marginal cost). Is the RM the cheapest for international too?

@LawrenceChard
It wasn't you – it was Robert Matthew, the author of the article that you republished on your site. He said "...it contained £2-18 shillings of gold but sold on the continental markets from between £4 and £10."
I didn't understand his shillings bit, but I assumed that his number came to less than £3.00, so 2x to 4x premiums (or rather up to 3.33x, conservatively, with £10.00/£3.00).
By the way, this bit from further up the thread is off:
There's an extra zero in your copper figure, and a slightly incorrect number – it should be 0834, not 0084.

Hi all – I've been reading a memoir by one of your countrymen, Charles Black. It's called Counterfeiter: The Story of a British Master Forger (1989).
He was a banknote forger, probably the best around in the 1970s, mostly of USD, but ultimately also some British pounds when he says he reminded himself that he was an Englishman after all. How he faked the watermarks was pure brilliance.
But he dropped something in passing that shocked me. He said his boss had a side hustle of selling fake Sovereigns to the finest bullion dealers in London. But, they weren't fake in terms of metal content. They were true Crown gold alloy coins, 91.67% fine, balance copper, just like real Sovereigns. The boss had them made in Switzerland with the help of some Lebanese forgers (Black says the Lebanese were the best overall forgers in the world). Black said this was profitable because of the markup, i.e. the premium.
That's hard to imagine today, since the premiums before the pandemic were only 5-6%. And that's over spot, which doesn't account for any fabrication costs. Were the premiums on Sovereigns much higher in the 1970s? Were they mostly proofs or something back then? He doesn't mention anything about proofs vs. normal bullion, special editions, etc. @LawrenceChardHave you ever discovered fake Sovereigns that were made of Crown gold? Any other fakes made of the real stuff? This type of forgery is fascinating, almost like an unauthorized minting more than true fakery.

Black only calls him "Fred" and states that this is a made-up name to protect his identity. Fred is depicted as a great, encouraging boss, but also someone who would kill people who threatened him. (He once killed a member of a criminal syndicate who came to his office with demands that Fred pay for "protection".) Black notes that Fred was a London nightclub owner (not sure what kind of club, like a strip club or a disco), and they were active around 1970 - 1975 or so. Fred paid for Black's shopping list of extremely expensive offset presses, platemaking machines, process cameras, inks, fine cotton papers, etc.
I've never heard of fakes made of solid gold before. That seems like it would ruin the margins of such an enterprise. The only fake gold bullion I've heard of is tungsten plated in gold, since tungsten has essentially the same density as gold (less than a 0.2% difference), particularly with PAMP Suisse and other bars.
Those silver readings are fairly trace level, if the numbers are millesimal fineness. 3 means 003? So 0.3% silver by weight? And then the fake is 0.9% by weight. I wonder why they bothered adding such a tiny amount of silver, and why the real Sovereigns had even 0.3% silver. That seems a bit high for unintentional trace level, and too low to be intentional or esthetically relevant. When silver is included in Crown gold, it's normally several percentage points, like the 3% silver in US Gold Eagles, which makes them so much brighter and prettier than Krugs and Sovereigns. I think other countries also included significant silver in their gold bullion, maybe Mexico a long time ago. I could've sworn I read about a Mexican coin that was all silver, no copper, as the alloying metal, so 90/10 or 91.67/8.33 with no copper at all.
That post by Jon Clarke relies on weight measurements that come down to less than a thousandth of a troy ounce difference. Both samples weigh 0.235... troy ounces, with the difference coming in the subsequent decimals. He doesn't mention the tolerances and accuracy of the scale used though, so it's not necessarily valid to assert that the fake sovereign truly weighs more than the real one. Most scales aren't accurate to that degree. The difference here is about 12 mg, for objects weighing about 8,000 mg. Are your scales that accurate?
As far as sources on Crown gold, I found Dodd's 1911 book History of Money in the British Empire and the United States (free online at Google books), and this article by Heather Darsie. It seems like Crown gold is defined by its gold fineness of 9167, not by the alloying metals. The balance is typically copper, but there's nothing that says there can't be some silver. I've attached a screenshot of some of the snippets from Dodd's book.
 

Hi all – I've been reading a memoir by one of your countrymen, Charles Black. It's called Counterfeiter: The Story of a British Master Forger (1989).
He was a banknote forger, probably the best around in the 1970s, mostly of USD, but ultimately also some British pounds when he says he reminded himself that he was an Englishman after all. How he faked the watermarks was pure brilliance.
But he dropped something in passing that shocked me. He said his boss had a side hustle of selling fake Sovereigns to the finest bullion dealers in London. But, they weren't fake in terms of metal content. They were true Crown gold alloy coins, 91.67% fine, balance copper, just like real Sovereigns. The boss had them made in Switzerland with the help of some Lebanese forgers (Black says the Lebanese were the best overall forgers in the world). Black said this was profitable because of the markup, i.e. the premium.
That's hard to imagine today, since the premiums before the pandemic were only 5-6%. And that's over spot, which doesn't account for any fabrication costs. Were the premiums on Sovereigns much higher in the 1970s? Were they mostly proofs or something back then? He doesn't mention anything about proofs vs. normal bullion, special editions, etc. @LawrenceChardHave you ever discovered fake Sovereigns that were made of Crown gold? Any other fakes made of the real stuff? This type of forgery is fascinating, almost like an unauthorized minting more than true fakery.

I don't understand. You're saying there wasn't a burglary attempt? But this story was published? How would they get that wrong? Didn't they interview you? I mean they said Chard's staff were amused to find the tunnel or something, which would require them to have talked to you or your staff. Is this some fake paper? (I don't see anything about aliens or whatever on the cover.)
I tried finding the story online but couldn't. I did find this though: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3483679/Hatton-Garden-gang-sentenced-14million-gem-raid-today.html
Those geezers were also involved in something called the "Brink's Mat" gold heist. We have a Brink's armored car firm in the US, but I don't know what the "Mat" refers to. Somehow they got caught every time, which makes me a little bit sad. Why do these sorts of big-time heist crews always get caught? What's the point of doing something if you're just going to get caught? What happened to pride in one's work, in one's craft? I mean, I'm not condoning robbery, but jeez, if you're going to do something, do it right. In California, they had a similar big robbery of an armored car company cash depot – it was a seven figure haul. They got caught because one of them tried to pay a realtor for a house with cash still wrapped in the armored car company's branded cash straps...

Hi all – I've been reading a memoir by one of your countrymen, Charles Black. It's called Counterfeiter: The Story of a British Master Forger (1989).
He was a banknote forger, probably the best around in the 1970s, mostly of USD, but ultimately also some British pounds when he says he reminded himself that he was an Englishman after all. How he faked the watermarks was pure brilliance.
But he dropped something in passing that shocked me. He said his boss had a side hustle of selling fake Sovereigns to the finest bullion dealers in London. But, they weren't fake in terms of metal content. They were true Crown gold alloy coins, 91.67% fine, balance copper, just like real Sovereigns. The boss had them made in Switzerland with the help of some Lebanese forgers (Black says the Lebanese were the best overall forgers in the world). Black said this was profitable because of the markup, i.e. the premium.
That's hard to imagine today, since the premiums before the pandemic were only 5-6%. And that's over spot, which doesn't account for any fabrication costs. Were the premiums on Sovereigns much higher in the 1970s? Were they mostly proofs or something back then? He doesn't mention anything about proofs vs. normal bullion, special editions, etc. @LawrenceChardHave you ever discovered fake Sovereigns that were made of Crown gold? Any other fakes made of the real stuff? This type of forgery is fascinating, almost like an unauthorized minting more than true fakery.

Hi all – I've been reading a memoir by one of your countrymen, Charles Black. It's called Counterfeiter: The Story of a British Master Forger (1989).
He was a banknote forger, probably the best around in the 1970s, mostly of USD, but ultimately also some British pounds when he says he reminded himself that he was an Englishman after all. How he faked the watermarks was pure brilliance.
But he dropped something in passing that shocked me. He said his boss had a side hustle of selling fake Sovereigns to the finest bullion dealers in London. But, they weren't fake in terms of metal content. They were true Crown gold alloy coins, 91.67% fine, balance copper, just like real Sovereigns. The boss had them made in Switzerland with the help of some Lebanese forgers (Black says the Lebanese were the best overall forgers in the world). Black said this was profitable because of the markup, i.e. the premium.
That's hard to imagine today, since the premiums before the pandemic were only 5-6%. And that's over spot, which doesn't account for any fabrication costs. Were the premiums on Sovereigns much higher in the 1970s? Were they mostly proofs or something back then? He doesn't mention anything about proofs vs. normal bullion, special editions, etc. @LawrenceChardHave you ever discovered fake Sovereigns that were made of Crown gold? Any other fakes made of the real stuff? This type of forgery is fascinating, almost like an unauthorized minting more than true fakery.

Hi all – I've been reading a memoir by one of your countrymen, Charles Black. It's called Counterfeiter: The Story of a British Master Forger (1989).
He was a banknote forger, probably the best around in the 1970s, mostly of USD, but ultimately also some British pounds when he says he reminded himself that he was an Englishman after all. How he faked the watermarks was pure brilliance.
But he dropped something in passing that shocked me. He said his boss had a side hustle of selling fake Sovereigns to the finest bullion dealers in London. But, they weren't fake in terms of metal content. They were true Crown gold alloy coins, 91.67% fine, balance copper, just like real Sovereigns. The boss had them made in Switzerland with the help of some Lebanese forgers (Black says the Lebanese were the best overall forgers in the world). Black said this was profitable because of the markup, i.e. the premium.
That's hard to imagine today, since the premiums before the pandemic were only 5-6%. And that's over spot, which doesn't account for any fabrication costs. Were the premiums on Sovereigns much higher in the 1970s? Were they mostly proofs or something back then? He doesn't mention anything about proofs vs. normal bullion, special editions, etc. @LawrenceChardHave you ever discovered fake Sovereigns that were made of Crown gold? Any other fakes made of the real stuff? This type of forgery is fascinating, almost like an unauthorized minting more than true fakery.

Hi all – I've been reading a memoir by one of your countrymen, Charles Black. It's called Counterfeiter: The Story of a British Master Forger (1989).
He was a banknote forger, probably the best around in the 1970s, mostly of USD, but ultimately also some British pounds when he says he reminded himself that he was an Englishman after all. How he faked the watermarks was pure brilliance.
But he dropped something in passing that shocked me. He said his boss had a side hustle of selling fake Sovereigns to the finest bullion dealers in London. But, they weren't fake in terms of metal content. They were true Crown gold alloy coins, 91.67% fine, balance copper, just like real Sovereigns. The boss had them made in Switzerland with the help of some Lebanese forgers (Black says the Lebanese were the best overall forgers in the world). Black said this was profitable because of the markup, i.e. the premium.
That's hard to imagine today, since the premiums before the pandemic were only 5-6%. And that's over spot, which doesn't account for any fabrication costs. Were the premiums on Sovereigns much higher in the 1970s? Were they mostly proofs or something back then? He doesn't mention anything about proofs vs. normal bullion, special editions, etc. @LawrenceChardHave you ever discovered fake Sovereigns that were made of Crown gold? Any other fakes made of the real stuff? This type of forgery is fascinating, almost like an unauthorized minting more than true fakery.

It looks like the 20% hole can be avoided, but only if you buy from individuals or used or something. The Brit comments about dealers might have revealed a different premise on my part. In the US the best prices and selection are at online dealers, especially SD Bullion and Silver.com / JM Bullion. They're much cheaper than local shops, and shipping is usually free. It's probably the size of the US market, and the cheap shipping options. (You can't get the same efficient shipping in Mexico, for example – their postal service is even worse than ours, and everything else will be expensive.)
Most states don't tax bullion, and it can be avoided by shipping elsewhere. So it's close to a free market.
But I think the bigger issue in the UK is that stackers will die out – there won't be any replenishment from younger generations. This means the market will shrink over time, and that will make it harder to do anything with silver. This is an issue in the US too, but less so because of the market size and lack of VAT.
It looks like stacking sort of picked up steam around the 1980s when various national mints returned to making bullion. For decades there was virtually nothing produced, say since WWII. In the 1970s it was just Krugs, and I think some erratic Sovereign production. Then Canada, the US, and others got into it, Mexico ramped up its production, etc. There's been lots of stacking since then, especially compared to the 1940s - 1980s period. But now it's clear that young people don't know or care about bullion. The example from that crackpot Maloney with the kids just reminded me that young people are not getting into bullion. His experiment is simply an artifact of choosing very young children – try it with teens and see what happens...
This implies that the future of silver is industrial, which might inform one's strategies.

No coin condoms for me. Takes away all the feeling... 😊
In general, I just wash my... hands, erm.
I guess I've actually gotten quite into hand washing since the pandemic started up. I've been vigorously washing my hands every time I return home from a trip to the market, or walking the dogs/checking the mail, etc. I've grown fond of vigorous hand washing. It feels good, and I probably should've washed my hands a lot more before the pandemic.
So now, whenever opening new (to me, not necessarily to the world) silver, I always wash up like a surgeon. It's natural now, low friction. I think I was also mindful initially of COVID risk from packages and the surfaces of the actual silver, banknotes, or world circulation coins. I collect all three, and was still ordering stuff from Europe well into the pandemic. I don't really worry about COVID much anymore, since I'm vaccinated, boosted, and never got infected anyway, but I stick with the hand washing.
The ultimate is probably thorough hand washing + cotton gloves, but the hand washing alone pretty much eliminates issues from handling. Sebum is the big contaminant coming from human hands and skin. It's the unique skin oil, really excellent lubricant actually. It's what banknotes are mostly contaminated with (along with cocaine...). Brief handling of coins with washed hands shouldn't do anything harmful. The sulfur in the air is the main issue with silver, so sealing off the air is the big thing.
For super precious coins, cotton gloves do help prevent subtle scratches from grains of sand on the skin and fingernails.