There are measures to prevent gold adulteration in the market.
The filler in gold that has been causing a stir in the market in recent days has been confirmed by large gold and silver businesses in the market as well as scientists to be tungsten or some other metals with tungsten content as the main ingredient.
After more than two months on the market, up to now many businesses have stopped adulterated gold and no consumer has bought this gold.
No gold filler detected by the tester
Gold fillers were discovered on the market in March 2011 when some gold trading companies bought gold blocks that looked like officially imported gold. The origin of the gold fillers has not been found, but according to the companies, this type of gold is often hand-carried or smuggled gold. Bao Tin Minh Chau Company sent samples of the gold fillers to two international laboratories abroad and according to the results, the fillers are mainly tungsten and some other metals.
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With the current high price of gold, the addition of tungsten and other metals will bring in a significant profit because it is easy to extract the gold content. On the market, the price of a bottle containing 100g of pure tungsten is about 2.4 million VND (equivalent to 100,000 VND/tael). Therefore, when mixing tungsten with gold, 1-3 taels of gold can be stolen from each tael of gold. Mr. Vu Minh Chau - General Director of Bao Tin Minh Chau Gold and Gemstone Company - shared: With the profit from gold trading only reaching 0.1-0.2% for each tael of gold, when mixing metals, criminals will enjoy a profit of up to 13%. With the current value of each tael of gold of more than 37 million VND, criminals will earn about 10 million VND/tael of gold.
It is known that tungsten or other heavy metals are mixed into molten gold and the gold will surround the tungsten particles; people can also use molten gold to cast around a block of tungsten or heavy metals inside to create gold filler. These sophisticated forms will form a layer of gold surrounding the tungsten core that cannot be detected by the naked eye. Even testing machines such as X-ray or gold testing machines cannot detect this fraud because the weight of gold and the other compound is similar.
Advice for consumers
To distinguish gold filler, according to Bao Tin Minh Chau experts, there are 6 ways including: rolling gold thinly, examining mechanical properties, melting point, melting with ceramic or graphite joints, dividing the metal to calculate the content and installing software to identify tungsten as well as some other heavy metals for X-ray fluorescence spectrometers. However, these are only methods applied to businesses. On the consumer side, it is advisable to buy gold bars and jewelry from reputable brands with sales invoices.
Along with the fluctuations in gold prices, policies related to the gold market and the ongoing gold adulteration, gold trading enterprises assess that this is a period of crisis for the domestic gold industry. The consumption of gold, especially gold jewelry, has decreased by 25-30% in recent months. Mr. Chau said that the appearance of gold adulteration on the market only affects gold trading enterprises because they have to buy raw gold for production, but no consumers have complained about buying gold adulteration. Up to this point, gold trading enterprises have stopped the phenomenon of gold adulteration on the market and cooperate closely with each other to avoid buying this type of gold.
According to Industry and Trade
