How to Prove Ownership of Gold Bars
Gold bars are among the most sought-after forms of bullion for investors, often priced lower than coins and easily traded quickly.
Proving ownership of these items is vitally important for investors. There are various methods available to them for doing this – the key ones being: purchase invoice or receipt, assay card and serial numbers.
Identification
Gold bars can help your investment portfolio remain secure during times of economic instability. In fact, some investors use profits from gold bar sales to diversify into other precious metals like silver and platinum or even into savings accounts or IRAs for portfolio diversification purposes.
Investors can verify ownership of gold bars by checking their purity, weight and authenticity before checking current gold prices to ensure their bars have received fair market valuation. This provides a transparent basis for negotiations with potential buyers as they start the transaction on solid ground.
Some gold dealers provide evidence of ownership with purchase receipts or invoices, while others rely on ultrasonic analysis to establish purity – this technique takes advantage of how different metals conduct electricity differently and can detect even sophisticated counterfeits.
Certificate of Authenticity
Before selling gold bars, it’s essential that they be authenticated as any other luxury goods such as designer handbags or watches. By adding serial numbers to the bars, buyers can quickly verify its legitimacy and trace its source, increasing buyer trust as well as potentially increasing the price they are willing to pay.
Another way to authenticate a gold bar is to weigh it. Counterfeiters often fill gold bars with non-gold material that causes them to weigh slightly less than genuine bars; performing a simple caliper test can help determine if yours is real or counterfeit.
Thirdly, inspect your gold bar’s markings and engravings. Authentic bars should bear their producer’s logo, gold purity levels and serial number which can be verified against credible sources. Many gold bars also feature additional security features like holograms that make counterfeiters’ replication efforts difficult.
Serial Numbers
Gold bars typically receive their own individual serial number that will identify it in any instance, whether sequential or random generated. They may also be assay-marked, which verifies they meet specific purity standards (usually those established by London Bullion Market Association).
Reselling genuine bullion bars makes them much simpler to resell; buyers have confidence knowing their purchase is authentic. That is also why purchasing from a reliable bullion dealer is key; their assaying processes will verify both the purity and weight of each bar they sell.
Note that not all programs that enable you to buy gold fractionally online provide evidence of ownership; this means that, even though you believe you own physical gold, in reality you are simply an unsecured creditor of the company operating the program – which can be very risky.
Manufacturer
Gold bars that lack serial numbers may make proving ownership more challenging if lost or stolen, since you will not be able to verify its serial number. In these circumstances, other proofs of ownership such as purchase receipts/invoices/appraisal reports and chain-of-custody documentation may need to be presented as evidence of ownership.
Verify the manufacturer of a gold bar by comparing its markings with authentic examples online. Look out for differences in font, etching style and numerical systems to detect any discrepancies.
Tests that you can run to verify whether or not a bar of gold is real include magnet testing and float testing; real gold should sink to the bottom of a glass of water while fake versions often float freely on top. You could also conduct the ping test, in which you strike the bar against another piece of metal until you hear an audible “ping,” to ensure its authenticity and help avoid counterfeits or low-quality bullion products.
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