Gold – But Not As We Know It!

In the good old days gold fraud was relatively uncommon; the odd dodgy Sovereign, gold plated items swearing blind they were solidly made of the good stuff and, if you were really foolish “Fool’s Gold” (more correctly known as Iron Pyrite) could trip you up and force you into a costly mistake But nowadays, with the advent of the internet, the perils and dangers are manifestly more sophisticated and therefore potentially much more dangerous

Last week we took a call from an enquirer seeking to establish the purity of some “computer gold” that had been languishing in their shed for some time. Apparently it still glistened like gold and was really very heavy so perhaps it was really valuable? Could we take a look – and here’s a picture. And there, in all their glory were two rough cast bars of gold in appearance metal.

Happily this is not our first rodeo and all the spider senses were being triggered and the alarm bells ringing. To begin with, it’s rare to find over £5000.00 worth of gold lurking in a dusty shed so we did ask where and when it had been acquired. No surprise then the reply was “online (name of auction site removed for fear of a libel case); it’s recovered gold from melted down circuit boards – I bought it from Israel” Oh dear – not looking good to even the most untrained eye is it? Further enquiries were fired in to the unsuspecting purchaser “how much did you pay for it?” we asked and it was with mixed emotions we received the reply “£15.00 each plus postage and packing of course”.

On one hand we were relieved that the financial consequences of the naïve purchase was limited to less than £50.00 all in but on the other we did slightly marvel at the concept that any sane individual would expect a nice Israeli gentleman to be selling them something worth £25000.00 plus for a mere £15.00 (plus postage of course)!

Be careful out there people – all that glistens is not gold and if it appears to be good to be true then it almost certainly is!

If you want your gold items checked out please do get in touch – happily it is rare that the news is this bad but don’t say we didn’t warn you!