Gold — Small, Dense and Worth Verifying

A one-kilo bar looks like every other one-kilo bar. Without serial recording at intake and a segregated arrangement, "your gold" quickly becomes "gold of the same description", and the distinction only surfaces at the worst possible moment. The paperwork at intake is doing more work than the vault door.

Form matters more than owners expect when it comes time to sell. Recognized bars and coins from known refiners trade readily; unusual formats, older bars without current assay documentation, and anything whose chain of custody has been broken may need assaying before a buyer will price it properly.

• Serial numbers at intake, photographed, against a signed inventory.
• Weight verified on arrival, in your presence if you attend.
• Assay cards and packaging retained with the bars.
• Allocated and segregated — your bars, stored apart.
• Independent audit, which you may attend.

A bar has a refiner, a serial number and a stated weight and fineness, and recording all of it means your holding is identified rather than described. That is what makes allocated storage meaningful in practice rather than in principle.

It is also what a buyer, an auditor or an executor works from. A holding recorded as a total weight is a number; one recorded bar by bar is an asset somebody else can verify.

1. 01Inventory taken and signed at intake, with you present if you wish.
2. 02Serial numbers and weights recorded and photographed.
3. 03Stored in a 9R-rated vault behind two 14,000-pound doors.
4. 04Access by appointment, to named individuals only.
5. 05The same bars released on withdrawal, checked against your copy.

Bring the assay cards and original packaging. They add nothing to the metal's value in a vault, and they matter considerably when you eventually sell — a bar with its card and packaging is simpler to move than one without.

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