Warning of 'strange' gold appearing on the market

Domestic raw gold price is approximately equal to world price

Mr. Van (owner of a gold shop in Ha Long City, Quang Ninh Province) informed that he bought 5 taels of gold bars above with the quality mark 9999 (ie 99.99%) but subjectively did not try it and looked at the outside and thought it was 99.5% gold so he bought it again. After that, he checked and the gold quality was only 98.8%. This is a 1 tael gold bar, one side has the marks like 9999, 37.5 gr, 24 K... and the other side has the information USA, VIETNAM - VIENTIANE, HONG KONG...

According to the gold business community, these are gold bars produced by Vietnamese gold shops abroad. They have beautiful designs but are of low quality. They are purchased by Vietnamese gold shops to be used as raw materials to produce gold jewelry.

An industry expert who has bought this type of gold advises buyers to test it because the quality of the gold is sometimes lower than 90%. According to this expert, more than 10 years ago, the same type of gold bars entered Vietnam in large quantities, but then subsided, and now they have reappeared. This expert also said that many years ago in Hong Kong, gold appeared with the outside marked as 4 9s but was “stuffed” inside, so the quality was only about 70%.

Gold bars are easy to produce from the molding stage to the external appearance, but the quality inside is difficult to know. Only by melting can we measure the gold's age, but looking at the outside is not necessarily accurate.

According to Mr. Tran Thanh Hai, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Vietnam Gold Investment and Trading Joint Stock Company (VGB), the consumption of raw gold from abroad into Vietnam is currently unprofitable with the price difference between domestic and foreign prices. The world gold price on January 22 was at 1,331 USD/ounce, equivalent to 36.5 million VND/tael. The domestic raw gold price in recent days has also been at 36.4 - 36.6 million VND/tael.

The reason why the price of raw gold is close to the world price is because the demand of gold shops for jewelry production is low. At the same time, many people consider raw gold as an investment channel, but the increase is not as expected, leading to poor capital flow into gold. Meanwhile, the buying and selling price of jewelry gold of trading enterprises is 36.5 - 36.8 million VND/tael.

With a low spread, buying raw gold floating on the market does not bring profit but also has high risks. Therefore, it is better not to buy raw gold of unclear origin to avoid financial losses.