Declaration Of Force Majeure: Gold, Platinum And Palladium!

Shouldnt those vaults be air tight?

Yes, they should. That is pretty standard for any bank vault, which is why they HAVE to have a way to open them from the inside. I remember a few stories in the newspapers about bank employees who smothered in the 1960s from being trapped in a vault over the weekend.



Now there is a sensible move. They have a lot of valuable stuff in an air-tight vault that is submerged but totally dry inside, so they open the vault, allowing tons of dirty water to flood in, and then move the contaminated valuable to some other site. Now, why didn't I think of that pearl of wisdom?

I guess that it was just to difficult to sandbag the building, pump out the sub-levels and THEN open the vault.

Indeed it does, Matt. Those of us who have observed and participated in the PM market for some time now are very well aware of all the shady dealing and manipulation that goes on there, so anything that happens that does not pass our "smell test" gets our attention very quickly. Any time someone who stores gold comes up with "we lost it but we don't know how it happened", sets our baloney detectors ringing like mad. This is the financial equivalent of "the dog ate my homework" excuse and is generally not accepted by very many of us.

No, there were manual and mechanical. My guess is that bank employees would go into the vault to count or inventory what was in there. Those who knew that they were in there went to a meeting and then home. Other bank employees did not know they were in there and "closed up" at quitting time. The people in the vault were probably quietly concentrating on their work and did not realize that the vault door was being closed until it was. Vaults tend to be pretty soundproof too, so yelling to get attention would not work. Some vaults, even then, had a telephone that connected to the bank's switchboard and security office so that help could be summoned. Time locks existed back then but usually could be over-ridden by a bank officer in an emergency.

These days, anyone closing up a vault is probably required to call out to anyone who might be inside a vault at closing time or else walk through the vault to make sure that no one else is in there. That would make sense.

Some vaults are simple 1-room affairs where anyone inside the vault can easily see anyone else in there. Others are more complex with up to several walls of safety deposit boxes set up like gym lockers, so someone else might not easily be visible.