Fake gold for sale?

[GregP507]

I find it hard to swallow that the following webpage is actually legitimate:

http://www.tungsten-alloy.com/gold-plated-tungsten-alloy-bar.html

It seems to be offering tungsten bars, salted with a coating of gold, to make them appear to be real gold bars. Since tungsten is roughly the same density as gold, and about 0.1% of the cost, it's plausible that someone might actually try to pass these off as real gold. However, I doubt any serious buyer of gold nowadays would sign a deal without assaying the gold to determine it's purity and authenticity.

 

[Xico]

yes this looks nice and dandy, but as the disclaimer reads:

Notice: Chinatungsten Online (Xiamen) Manu.&Sales Corp. is a very professional and serious company, specializing in manufacturing and selling tungsten related products for more than two decades. Our gold-plated tungsten bar and tungsten alloy golden bar are only for souvenir and decoration purpose. We can provide all kinds of tungsten alloy golden bar as your requirements. Here we declare: Please do not use our gold-plated tungsten alloy bar and tungsten alloy golden bar for any illegal purpose.

but it is possible that some will fall for that.... :(

 

[GregP507]

I love this part: "Notice: Chinatungsten Online (Xiamen) Manu.&Sales Corp. is a very professional and serious company..."

 

[Palinurus]

I recalled having read about these some time ago, so I did a search. Turns out there was some sort of a scare about 'fake' gold bars back in 2012.

Some examples:

_http://www.maxkeiser.com/2012/09/chinese-firm-markets-tungsten-filled-gold-bars-coins/
_http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/03/26/the-drilled-gold-bars-filled-with-tungsten/
_http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/03/25/the-problem-of-fake-gold-bars/
_http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-09-23/gold-counterfeiting-goes-viral-10-tungsten-filled-gold-bars-are-discovered-manhattan