If Buying Gold Bars, Also Buy ...

The best way to protect yourself is buy directly from the mint, or buy from reputable dealers for bullion. Those CL deals can be tempting but theres a reason why theyre asking below melt, they may or may not be real. Anything that seems to good to be true more than likely is

Seems pretty unnecessary for their size. Molybdenum (which you wouldnt really have to worry about) and lead are close to the same mass as silver, but leads is higher. You could maybe sneak a little of it in a fake but the savings wouldnt be worth the effort with out a price increase.

If you got it from a reputable place and the design/weight is right I wouldnt be too worried about it especially if a magnet doesn't stick.

There may be some non magnetic metal that mimics silver but its not a common one (as far as I know) so you would have to consider the cost of it as well. Its likely if any metal did exist the cost of it would price it out of use at the current silver price

I posted this same story in another forum post from this weeks Coin World and was advised the link didn't work (guess you have to be a member). Anyway, after viewing this post on the same scam, and others thinking of staying with silver, I copy and pasted the end of the article below... The seller of this fake 10oz gold piece returned back to Russia, and the same scam was done to silver 100oz bars back in the 80's & 90's...

-------cut & pasted from Coin World Article-------------

Nessim said the seller of the altered bars was known on 47th Street by fellow merchants primarily as a finisher and polisher of jewelry.

Nessim said federal authorities who went to the Brooklyn home of the seller of the altered bars learned from neighbors that he had returned to Russia.

Scattered reports have surfaced within the precious metals industry of large silver bars being altered and filled with tungsten or other nonprecious metals to perpetrate a similar fraud upon unsuspecting buyers.

Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Coin World published reports of genuine Engelhard 100-ounce .999 fine silver bars that had been drilled lengthwise and the cavities filled with rods of tungsten. The ends of each hole were capped off with silver to hide the alteration.

The deception was later discovered when the bars were sent for refining and the capped ends popped off while being sent through rolling machinery.

At the time of the earlier deception, silver was trading at less than $10 per ounce. Silver closed at $33.95 per troy ounce Sept. 27. â- 

Nice article. Due to increase in the price of gold and the demand for it, increased the rate of counterfeit of gold.