The Fight Against Counterfeit Precious Metals | Spain Blackout: Just the Tip of the European Energy Crisis Iceberg | Savings and Investment Union: How the EU is Targeting Citizens’ Savings

With the summer finally upon us, it would appear that old investor adage of “sell in May and go away” definitely doesn’t apply anymore. These days, investors need to keep their eyes and ears open at all times and be constantly in a position to react and adapt to global events. Only last month, we found ourselves on what briefly appeared to be the precipice of WWIII, with a surprise escalation of the Iran-Israel conflict. The “12 day war”, as President Trump called it, might have deescalated as quickly as it began, but it certainly served as a stern reminder that we are living through extremely volatile times.

For gold owners, this was yet another confirmation that during these turbulent times, physical precious metals are more important than ever. Especially since the start of the year, and the many previous “surprises” that we’ve seen so far, countless other investors, many that never owned gold before, keep flocking to the metal and fueling the ongoing bull market. With this surge in demand, however, a lot of bad actors have come out of the woodwork, looking to take advantage of unsuspecting gold buyers. As we’ve done in past, we decided to use this issue of the Digger to keep our readers up to date with the current risks in the metals industry: this time, we’ll look into the bigger problem of counterfeit bars and coins.

We’ll also turn our attention to Europe, and the unique challenges the continent is facing in its energy industry. The recent blackouts in Spain made global headlines, but what a lot of the coverage missed was the real causes of this incident and why it is likely to become a lot more frequent in the near future.

We hope you'll enjoy this issue of the Digger and don't hesitate to contact the BFI Bullion team with any questions.
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The Fight Against Counterfeit Precious Metals

Gold has been on a meteoric rise for quite some time now – over 90% gains in 5 years – and thanks to these gains, it has gone from being an “old man’s investment” to the “hot ticket”. This surge in popularity, however, just as with any product that enjoys significant market demand or high value, has also attracted the attention of bad actors of all sorts and counterfeiters in particular. Fake bars and coins are nothing new, of course, but what is new are the methods being used and the quality of the fakes, which is now much higher than what we used to see in the past. Trying to keep pace with the counterfeiters is not an easy task for any company operating in the metals industry, but as we’ll explain in this article, at BFI Bullion, we have good reasons to remain confident in our ability to remain a step ahead.

While the gold price rally has been regularly making mainstream headlines, especially over the last two years, the darker side of this bull market hasn’t really been getting the attention it merits. Of course, as our clients and regular readers will likely recall, we’ve been trying to do our best at BFI Bullion to highlight the risks posed by dealing with unscrupulous metals dealers, sharing the most common scams and traps that investors should watch out for and generally  spreading awareness regarding the latest dangers within our industry. This time, we want to address the bigger problem that lies at the heart of so many fraudulent transactions, namely the fake bars and coins themselves.

The far-reaching impact of the counterfeit scourge 

The counterfeit trade of today is far more evolved and sophisticated than the obvious knockoffs of yesteryear and the volumes of the fake metals entering the system are significantly higher as well. Already in 2019, it was reported that more than 1,000 counterfeit gold bars were detected in vaults around the world. Many of these bars were almost identical to their legitimate counterparts. They were marked with perfectly forged refinery stamps, passed assay and weight tests, and some were even found to be 99.98 percent pure, which explains how they were allowed to enter the global supply chain and remain undetected. Eventually, all bars from this specific batch were identified and removed, however, this incident raised a lot of questions about whether this finding represented only the tip of the iceberg.
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