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Assay card/Certificate
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How do you feel about bullion without Assay cards? I ran across This "info" while searching something and the guy is talking about how he messed up buying a JM gold bar without it having an assay cert.
I for one am not worried about assay certs with JM, Engelhard & Other well known Bars. They are generally accepted without them as 90% of the bars do not have an accompanying assay with them.
I do have a lot of silver/gold bars with Assay certs. Its kinda funny as most of them are with small gram sized bars such as 1 gram gold, 1 or 5 gram silver bars & 1 oz Credit/pamp suisse bars. Most of my larger bars do not have the assay certs with them and it doesn't bother me. I do like the bars that are sealed in Assay cards such as Engelhard Platinum, gold & Palladium bars. They add a little something extra and I will pay a little more for them but I'm not deterred away from the bars without them, Just won't pay as much.
For some reason I'm different when it comes to Palladium. I will not purchase a Pd bar without it being Sealed in Assay card. For me its just b/c of the metal. I fear the bars would be hard to liquidate without the assay. I feel this way just b/c Pd is not as well known as Pt, Au or Ag.
What are your thoughts on bullion bars with or without Assay certs? Do you pay a premium for assay or less if assay is not included? If you're worried about the bar being fake wouldn't you also have to worry about the Assay Cert being a fraud?
I for one am not worried about assay certs with JM, Engelhard & Other well known Bars. They are generally accepted without them as 90% of the bars do not have an accompanying assay with them.
I do have a lot of silver/gold bars with Assay certs. Its kinda funny as most of them are with small gram sized bars such as 1 gram gold, 1 or 5 gram silver bars & 1 oz Credit/pamp suisse bars. Most of my larger bars do not have the assay certs with them and it doesn't bother me. I do like the bars that are sealed in Assay cards such as Engelhard Platinum, gold & Palladium bars. They add a little something extra and I will pay a little more for them but I'm not deterred away from the bars without them, Just won't pay as much.
For some reason I'm different when it comes to Palladium. I will not purchase a Pd bar without it being Sealed in Assay card. For me its just b/c of the metal. I fear the bars would be hard to liquidate without the assay. I feel this way just b/c Pd is not as well known as Pt, Au or Ag.
What are your thoughts on bullion bars with or without Assay certs? Do you pay a premium for assay or less if assay is not included? If you're worried about the bar being fake wouldn't you also have to worry about the Assay Cert being a fraud?
Its all relative
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Comments
I don't think an assay card/certificate is as important as a correct all-around look.
I think there is a degree of protection with a top tier slab if you're talking coins.
As for bars...it's easy to make a fake bar, especially an off- or no-name brand. It's easy to make a paper COA.
It's maybe a little harder to make a fake name-brand bar--familiarity helps your eye pick out irregularities. At least theoretically. And it's significantly harder to make a good quality, correct looking and feeling assay card with a good quality, correct-looking fake bar within.
That's one of the reasons I like PAMP. The Fortuna design is at least a minor inconvenience to counterfeiters--don't think that wasn't part of the reason they began using it. Their assay cards are high quality, too.
Ultimately, you don't have to make something counterfeit-proof. You just have to make it a tiny bit more difficult to counterfeit than the next guy's product. Counterfeiters, like everyone, follow the path of least resistance.
Boil all of that down, and even if it's only a tiny bit of safety, the *perception* that the product is safer pushes its desirability up. Gresham's law in action.
--Severian the Lame
I think it adds a lot, especially the JM assay cards as they actually bring the exact date, pretty neat if you ask me.
I track them on ebay and gold gram bars do sell for a lot more with their assay cards.
The most expensive ones are usually JM and perth mint for some reason.
Kitco assay cards are neat as well and both suisse ( pamp and credit) sell very nicely.
in silver the premiums are just insane, i saw a 10 gram silver engelhard bar with its orginal assay card sell for over $150 on ebay.
Groucho Marx
With larger bullion such as 1 kilo gold bars, the assay card is helpful, but meaningless in a sense when you sell the bar as it will likely get re-assayed anyway.