Every Day’s a School Day!

Here at Devon Precious Metals we get to see hundreds of variations and types of gold, silver, platinum and palladium. We rely on years of experience, sophisticated testing equipment and a network of advisers to ensure that we give good advice, pay the right price for both parties and don’t end up buying fakes.

This week we were presented with something new – three sovereigns none of which that looked “right” – the sort of thing that usually raises alarm bells. The mantra for sovereigns is that they need to be of a certain weight, diameter and thickness or they could be fakes. They also need to get past the beady, electronic eye of our Sigma testing device.

Sat with the client and with the coins in hand it was easy to be concerned as all three weighed differently, only one got the Sigma seal of approval with another being marginal and the final one way off the scale. So, safety first…. We paid for the one that passed and, with the clients agreement took the other two for further testing in the mighty XRF machine fully expecting at least one to be a big fat fail!

But, to everyone’s delight they both passed which just goes to show that gut instinct, experience and tasty testing tools are sometimes fallible. In this case though everyone was happy with the client getting paid for three sovereigns and a valuable lesson learned for us.

If you are concerned about the veracity of your gold or other precious metals and live in Plymouth, South Hams, West Devon or South East Cornwall please get in touch and we will be delighted to help.