Re: CV and mad panic behaviour
Reply #7216 –
Wonder who was running the show when the Perth Mint started diddling the gold standards. Now there's something people should be up in arms over.
In fairness to the mint, I believe it complies with globally accepted standards, 4.0 purity(99.99%) and usually supplies above 4.0 with something like 4.5(99.995).
China sits outside those standards, oddly it doesn't require higher purity but it does cap the level of impurities. It's standard practise to "water down" gold to 4.0, usually something less valuable like silver, copper or titanium. What China requires is that any one of those trace metals doesn't exceed a certain threshold, in a way it's China fiddling the books, gaming the system, so that it receives higher purity gold than other nations. I suppose when you think about it, given countries trade in billions and trillions of dollars worth of gold, it adds up in the parts per million.
Managing the purity as close to 4.0 as possible saves a country many millions or even billions of dollars.
For most metals the term commercially pure is used, typically this means the content is above 4.0, it may also mean that certain impurities are minimised or absent, commonly oxygen or hydrogen content are the main concern. Some metals have critical trace element levels, like copper levels in aluminium or titanium.