I think my first two actions would be… buy a good safe, and then put the gold in it.
You could. A good safe that can’t be readily broken into or removed from your property will be very large and heavy. That would likely cost you at least $10,000 to have installed. Not a huge expenditure considering the value. $800,000 is a lot of incentive for someone to get to that gold though. Even if you don’t tell anybody why you bought the safe plenty of people will know that you did, and they might think you’re hiding something even more valuable and go to great lengths to get at it. Not like a gold brick isn’t enough incentive.
Would platinum isotopes be involved?
Which impurities are in a specific piece of gold will depend on where it’s mined. It could have platinum, it may not. There could be all kinds of other impurities.
As far as how much, gold these days is usually refined to .9999 purity. Since there’s roughly 3.8*10^24 atoms in a 12.5 kg gold bar, there’s about 10^20 non-gold atoms in that bar.
I asked because I recall something about all gold to have previously been platinum so I was curious if platinum isotopes remained.
I’ve never heard this before. Platinum is atomic number 78 and gold is 79, but AFAIK they were both created simultaneously in the course of r-process nucleosynthesis during supernova events.
I’m not sure why @MrDibble is being so cagey about it, but the process of identifying sources for gold is called “gold fingerprinting” or more generally “isotope signature”, and it involves looking at ratios of relatively long-lived isotopes that occur in trace amounts in even ‘pure’ materials. For gold, the isotopes used include iron, nickel, copper, silver, tin, lead, chromium, titanium, arsenic, mercury, and several others, including synthetic isotopes that can be added for unique identification that don’t occur in nature. These methods are also use to identify the original source of gold to distinguish between legally and illegally mined gold. This kind of signature identification isn’t limited to gold and actually has roots in geoscience with determining the age of the universe and astrophysical origin of the heavier elements produced through stellar and supernova/neutron star nucleosynthesis.
Stranger
I’ve been looking back over my browser history for where I saw that but coming up empty so far. It didn’t say when it happened but said something about platinum picking up protons to become gold. I assumed that meant inside a dying star but I have no idea if the statement or my reading of it was correct.
Now I remember something from the Dope that confirms what you said. Well maybe it was here and maybe I remember what it said. It was something about no elements heavier than iron being formed inside a star and then yada yada yada supernova. Probably a few more details than that.
So cagey I already posted links to the Wiki article on fingerprinting…
I was being circumspect because some of the details of fingerprinting, like exactly what gets added at the refinery specifically as traces, isn’t common public knowledge and I know Rand Refinery, for one, would like to keep it that way.
Wow, so this is like when they added tagents to explosives for tracing.
Sorry, I missed your link. My error.
Of course it would be inadvisable to present any proprietary information on a message board but anyone with the knowledge and facilities to attempt to ‘counterfeit’ gold bullion isn’t going to be relying on a web search for information. Fortunately, there is little demand or profit in doing so except to conceal gold sourced from illegal mining operations.
Stranger
Even more difficult, possession of coined or bullion gold was mostly illegal in the USA until after the gold standard was dropped in the 1970s. I think Kelly’s Heroes would have had to find someplace safe to bury their gold and come back to it after the war; then presuming they could evade any French laws about wartime looting or exporting gold sell it to a friendly Swiss dealer.
Exactly where Rand Refinery’s main concern lies. Illegal gold mining is a huge concern in South Africa.
If I recall correctly, Kelly and the gang were heading for the Swiss border with their gold. Not sure that they could get across easily given it was wartime and all.
No way they could drive a tank into Switzerland because their army has really fancy knives.
Flash a couple of those gold bars and the Swiss would have ruptured themselves tearing down any fence separating Kelly, et al and their banks.
This came up in a British TV series recently based on the actual events after the UK’s largest gold heist. They employed a dodgy scrap jewellery dealer who used his business both as a front for offloading the gold and as a source of scrap to lower the purity. He had a small smelter at his home and would melt the bars together with the scrap jewellery to make plausibly impure ingots he could sell on.