Thai Gold Baht Bars

[LawrenceChard]

We do not see gold bars from Thailiand very often, but:

Technically, these can't be classed as "Investment Gold" for VAT purposes, as they are only 96.5% gold, rather than 99.5%.

S. Siriporn Gold Smith

I presume this says 5 baht, but I will check the next time I go for a massage.

This result is within tolerance range for the stamped 96.5%

Addendum:

 The weight is stamped on the front of the bar "5 บาท"! 🙂

Of course, it helps if you can read some Thai. บาท = baht.

The original meaning of the word baht was as a unit of weight equal to 15.244 grams.

The standard purity of Thai gold is 96.5 percent, the actual gold content of one baht by weight is 15.244 × 0.965 = 14.71046 grams; equivalent to about 0.47295191859437
troy ounces.

A quick spot of mental arithmetic (well, a spreadsheet) gives 2.36475959297185 troy ounces of fine gold.

When I originally posted, I had only seen photographs of the bar and the test result. A member of our warehouse team had done the testing, but when I was in the office today, I gave him some further training to complete the missing fields. He also used calipers to measure the dimensions:

Length 43.61mm, Width 18.16mm, Depth 5.55mm

 

Edited September 20, 2022 by LawrenceChard
addendum

[Rll1288]

so does that mean you would have top charge VAT to sell them on then? and when I mean you.. I mean as in Dealers

Edited July 30, 2021 by Rll1288

[dicker]

Interesting bar.  When I was last in Thailand, my wife took me in a tedious shopping trip to an upmarket shopping centre.  

I found a jewellery store that has a few small ingots in the window, but I couldn’t get them to sell me one for love or money!  Naturally they were desperate to sell my wife very expensive jewellery with stones as vast vast markups.  

Shame because the little ingots were quite attractive with a small tree on them!

Best

Dicker
 

 

[LawrenceChard]

5 hours ago, Rll1288 said:

so does that mean you would have top charge VAT to sell them on then? and when I mean you.. I mean as in Dealers

Yes, but only on the dealer's margin, so if one was to buy it for 99%, and sell it for 105%, the VAT payable (by the dealer), would be 1/6th of 6% = 1%.

Most investors would not see or care about the calculation.

This assumes that the dealer operates a secondhand special scheme, which not all dealers do.

I very much doubt for example that the Royal Mint use it.

By coincidence, earlier today, we were offered about 3,000 silver Britannias by a big dealer. The dealer had bought these back from an investor, but did not operate the special scheme, so was asking a second tranche of VAT on them. It seems dumb to me to voluntarily reward HMRC with two lots of VAT on the same goods, and a shame for potential investors to be denied the opportunity to buy at a saving, albeit not necessarily 20%. In my opinion, the dealer in question has got things too easy.

Edited July 30, 2021 by LawrenceChard
typos

[LawrenceChard]

1 hour ago, dicker said:

Interesting bar.  When I was last in Thailand, my wife took me in a tedious shopping trip to an upmarket shopping centre.  

I found a jewellery store that has a few small ingots in the window, but I couldn’t get them to sell me one for love or money!  Naturally they were desperate to sell my wife very expensive jewellery with stones as vast vast markups.  

Shame because the little ingots were quite attractive with a small tree on them!

Best

Dicker
 

 

I suppose they would grow on you!

Is that what you call bonsai?

[dicker]

Slowly….

[SilverStorm]

6 hours ago, LawrenceChard said:

We do not see gold bars from Thailiand very often, but:

Technically, these can't be classed as "Investment Gold" for VAT purposes, as they are only 96.5% gold, rather than 99.5%.

S. Siriporn Gold Smith

I presume this says 5 baht, but I will check the mext time I go for a massage.

This result is within tolerance range for the stamped 96.5%

Thanks for sharing.  It's interesting to see how gold bars look like in other countries.   Personally, I rather stick with internationally recognized bullion from RM, RCM, US Mint, Perth Mint, etc.  While the novelty of buying foreign gold is intriguing, I worry about the lack of interest (or demand) when it's time to liquidate.  

BTW Lawrence, I don't understand your results reading.  What does 23.05 and 23.14 figures mean (for obverse and reverse respectively)?  Thanks.

 

[LawrenceChard]

1 hour ago, SilverStorm said:

Thanks for sharing.  It's interesting to see how gold bars look like in other countries.   Personally, I rather stick with internationally recognized bullion from RM, RCM, US Mint, Perth Mint, etc.  While the novelty of buying foreign gold is intriguing, I worry about the lack of interest (or demand) when it's time to liquidate.  

BTW Lawrence, I don't understand your results reading.  What does 23.05 and 23.14 figures mean (for obverse and reverse respectively)?  Thanks.

 

 

1 hour ago, SilverStorm said:

Thanks for sharing.  It's interesting to see how gold bars look like in other countries.   Personally, I rather stick with internationally recognized bullion from RM, RCM, US Mint, Perth Mint, etc.  While the novelty of buying foreign gold is intriguing, I worry about the lack of interest (or demand) when it's time to liquidate.  

BTW Lawrence, I don't understand your results reading.  What does 23.05 and 23.14 figures mean (for obverse and reverse respectively)?  Thanks.

 

Hah, I didn't even notice those, but they are the caratage as shown by the Niton machine. It assumes some users are dummies who can't understand percentages or decimals, and therefore work for or as jewellers.

[SilverStorm]

7 minutes ago, LawrenceChard said:

 

Hah, I didn't even notice those, but they are the caratage as shown by the Niton machine. It assumes some users are dummies who can't understand percentages or decimals, and therefore work for or as jewellers.

Ah, makes sense now thanks.  BTW what was the weight of that bar?   I don't see any weight stamping on it (unless it was on the reverse).

Edited July 30, 2021 by SilverStorm

[CadmiumGreen]

10 hours ago, LawrenceChard said:

I presume this says 5 baht, but I will check the mext time I go for a massage.

At least you didn’t say soapy…

[Mkman123]

Cool thai gold bar! 96.5% gold is 23kt which is what most thai gold is. 1 baht is roughly 1/2 oz of gold, so that 5 baht bar is about 2.5 oz of pure gold. When I go to thailand, I love going into the gold stores and looking at the bars and the jewelry they have for sale, its very beautiful.

[LawrenceChard]

1 hour ago, SilverStorm said:

Ah, makes sense now thanks.  BTW what was the weight of that bar?   I don't see any weight stamping on it (unless it was on the reverse).

The weight is stamped on the front of the bar "5 บาท"! 🙂

Of course, it helps if you can read some Thai. บาท = baht.

The original meaning of the word baht was as a unit of weight equal to 15.244 grams.

The standard purity of Thai gold is 96.5 percent, the actual gold content of one baht by weight is 15.244 × 0.965 = 14.71046 grams; equivalent to about 0.47295191859437
troy ounces.

A quick spot of mental arithmetic (well, a spreadsheet) gives 2.36475959297185 troy ounces of fine gold.

When I originally posted, I had only seen photographs of the bar and the test result. A member of our warehouse team had done the testing, but when I was in the office today, I gave him some further training to complete the missing fields. He also used calipers to measure the dimensions:

Length 43.61mm, Width 18.16mm, Depth 5.55mm

I will add the above to the original post.

 

[LawrenceChard]

48 minutes ago, CadmiumGreen said:

At least you didn’t say soapy…

I think they only use that in the dodgy places for the tourists. Oil is better, sweet almond mixed with a little lavender, jasmin, lemon grass, or ylang-ylang. Coconut is also good.

The baht is or was also called a tical, so when I next see my friendly local Thai masseuse, I will ask her if she would like a tical, and see what happens. 🙂

[LawrenceChard]

On 30/07/2021 at 12:03, LawrenceChard said:

We do not see gold bars from Thailiand very often, but:

Technically, these can't be classed as "Investment Gold" for VAT purposes, as they are only 96.5% gold, rather than 99.5%.

S. Siriporn Gold Smith

I presume this says 5 baht, but I will check the mext time I go for a massage.

This result is within tolerance range for the stamped 96.5%

Addendum:

 The weight is stamped on the front of the bar "5 บาท"! 🙂

Of course, it helps if you can read some Thai. บาท = baht.

The original meaning of the word baht was as a unit of weight equal to 15.244 grams.

The standard purity of Thai gold is 96.5 percent, the actual gold content of one baht by weight is 15.244 × 0.965 = 14.71046 grams; equivalent to about 0.47295191859437
troy ounces.

A quick spot of mental arithmetic (well, a spreadsheet) gives 2.36475959297185 troy ounces of fine gold.

When I originally posted, I had only seen photographs of the bar and the test result. A member of our warehouse team had done the testing, but when I was in the office today, I gave him some further training to complete the missing fields. He also used calipers to measure the dimensions:

Length 43.61mm, Width 18.16mm, Depth 5.55mm

 

More translation:

Using Google lens, the wording in the two line of the oval cartouche translate as:

Silk Shop of Gold    or  Diamond Shopping Mall or Petchthong Mall 

and

Sirikorn University or Siriporn University or Korn University or  Complete

It seems that Thai can be quite a difficult language, some words having different meanings in different contexts.

Additional information:

Siriporn is always a female name. Thai ศิริ (sir) meaning "glory, splendour" and พร (phon) meaning "blessing".

Google lens translated it as Daughter.

Alert:

Searching for "Siriporn" in Google with "Images" selected fails to find any gold bars, but does find an interesting selection of other images, some probably because of the last 4 letters.

🙂

 

[LawrenceChard]

A 10 Baht Cast Gold Bar tdc 965

The initials were not quite clear to me, and I asked so if anyone can contribute a better guess, please do so.

Thanks to @CollectForFun for providing the answer!

This Niton test result confirms the gold purity as accurate.

Weight 10 Baht, or on our metric scales 152.74 grams

Dimensions: 57.5 x 23.50 x 7.06mms

 

 

Edited July 31, 2021 by LawrenceChard

[CollectForFun]

5 hours ago, LawrenceChard said:

A 10 Baht Cast Gold Bar tctc? 965

The initials are not quite clear, so if anyone can contribute a better guess, please do so.

tdc

https://tdcgold.com

[LawrenceChard]

46 minutes ago, CollectForFun said:

tdc

https://tdcgold.com

Brilliant, thank you!

[SilverStorm]

Thanks for clarification Lawrence.  It's been a good learning experience!

[LawrenceChard]

On 30/07/2021 at 22:17, Mkman123 said:

Cool thai gold bar! 96.5% gold is 23kt which is what most thai gold is. 1 baht is roughly 1/2 oz of gold, so that 5 baht bar is about 2.5 oz of pure gold. When I go to thailand, I love going into the gold stores and looking at the bars and the jewelry they have for sale, its very beautiful.

Approximately right. (That's the second time today I have said that).

But 96.5% is not 23ct, nor vice versa.

23ct gold is 23/24 = 0.958333333333333 or 95.8333333333333

96.5% =.965 x 24 = 23.16 cts.

😎

[Britannia47]

 

 

On 18/12/2022 at 13:38, LawrenceChard said:

Approximately right. (That's the second time today I have said that).

But 96.5% is not 23ct, nor vice versa.

23ct gold is 23/24 = 0.958333333333333 or 95.83333333333

96.5% =.965 x 24 = 23.16 cts.

😎

You tell ‘em LC -  very sloppy not to be absolutely accurate! 

I used to think 900 gold, eg early Mexican/US, was a lot inferior to 22ct, but when you convert it there’s not much difference at 21.6 carat! 😃

[LawrenceChard]

4 hours ago, Britannia47 said:

You tell ‘em LC -  very sloppy not to be absolutely accurate! 

I used to think 900 gold, eg early Mexican/US, was a lot inferior to 22ct, but when you convert it there’s not much difference at 21.6 carat! 😃

Although there is not much percentage difference between 900 and 916, there is still a large percentage differential between the balances of 100 and 84.

A slightly different perspective on the same situation.

😎