I remember a few years ago when the Alibaba fake silver rush flodded my area of the world. It was a nightmare. I had a bunch of 10 ounce Engelhard bars and wanted to diversify into some 1 ounce rounds that I was interested in. Brought them into my local shop and was blown away. Shop owner brought some fakes and I could not tell the difference. The weight was spot on too.
It scared me. I used to scrounge some other spots that "we buy gold" and would get some good deals on generics and bars. But I knew these guys wern't truly testing what was coming in. It slowed my stacking to a crawl. I wonder if somewhere in my stack I have a few fakes. ugh
I hope not. : )