1983: Tungsten Filled Gold Bars in Wake of London Bullion Theft
November 25th, 2009In response to The Rumor About London Good Delivery Gold Bars That Are Allegedly Filled with Tungsten, JS sent this Reuters article from 1983.
The tungsten trick has been tried before.
Via: New York Times:
Austrians Seize False Gold Tied to London Bullion Theft
REUTERS
Published: December 22, 1983
The Austrian police announced the arrest today of 5 men and the discovery of 10 counterfeit gold bars stamped with numbers and refiner’s name to match 6,000 real bars stolen in Britain last month.
The police said the five arrested in Vienna on Tuesday night apparently planned to sell the counterfeit gold, passing it off as part of the haul of three tons of bullion stolen by masked gunmen from a warehouse near London’s Heathrow Airport on Nov. 26.
A police spokesman said the police did not know how the men had discovered the numbers stamped on the stolen bars.
The police at first suspected the counterfeit bars were part of the Heathrow booty, but the spokesman said tests showed the bars were made of tungsten and only coated with gold.
The fake bars were seized in a police raid on a hotel where the five men – four Italians and an Austrian – were meeting.
I can’t resist pointing out that the fact that the bars contained tungsten is not logically inconsistent with them being the ones that were indeed stolen…
Tungsten is a very difficult metal to handle. Its got an extremely high melting temperature, 3422C. Melting tungsten and casting it into ingots that are nearly the same size as gold bars is NOT the kind of thing you do in the garden shed. You need a specialist refiner. This costs money & leaves a paper trail.
Were these guys charged? Did the police discover how they made the tungsten bars? Was the “real” gold ever recovered?
Does the tungsten have to be cast? What about casting (say) 1/4 of an ingot of gold, then let it solidify, place a lump of solid tungsten and then pour in gold up to the mass of the total bar? Keep the difference.
btw: actually used WolframAlpha in anger for once: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=gold,+tungsten+density
Which is exactly why the present Tungsten fakes were probably manufactured under the auspices of some part of officialdom. It’s too much of a job for anyone that is not a professional.
Old game of make x for tracking, y as testing and selling them.
So long as the cost is lower than the real gold bar, the weight and feel can be faked, its a win 🙂