There is a saying most people have heard. “If it's too good to be true, then it probably is.” I believe people who frequent Ebay and other auction sites know that phrase even more than others. That's why I felt a need to write this article regarding the infamous "Nazi bullion” one might see popping up around the internet over the past year. Since this was written in early 2010, I have seen them for sale on Ebay, Gunbroker, Ioffer and Craigslist. I am sure they are other places as well.

     It is a fact that Germany stockpiled bullion gold and silver during the war. While some was probably attained through legal means, a large, unknown amount was acquired by an extensive system of theft that included from businesses across Europe and from the belongings of holocaust victims like dental gold, jewelry and eyeglasses.

     Stolen art and valuables has been a very sensitive subject since the war ended almost 65 years ago.  To this day, professionals around the globe are still trying to track down and recover lost valuables that disappeared during Nazi control. It is believed that a lot of the bullion left the country in various forms (i.e. coins, bars etc). While it is not possible to prove a gold coin was a piece of “Nazi gold” a stamped bar would be.

     Currently under increasingly difficult policies on auctions regarding supposed "hate" material, numismatic and philatelic items marked with the German swastika are permitted while other historical collectibles are not. I am not going to get into that argument because that’s not what this article is about. Bullion would, in theory, fall into the former category, however since the bullion is considered stolen by the Nazi government; it would be illegal to own and would be against further policies.

     Now some of the notorious sellers have come up with stories like “my Grandpa brought these back from the war”. Well, if he actually managed to stumble on the illusive gold or silver, he smuggled them back illegally and would still therefore be illegal to own. “But why do you think he smuggled them back?” you might ask. Well, to understand this, you have to understand the paperwork process for an American soldier to return with his war souvenirs during that time. The famous “bring back paperwork” or “capture paperwork” that can add value to a piece of militaria like that German flag or the P-38 pistol Grandpa still has stashed in the attic had to be signed by their commanding officer and he was to inspect and approve all souvenirs.  On the paperwork it was to be noted that the item in question had NO INTRINSIC VALUE. Since any and all bars would be violating that, the soldier in question would have had to smuggle the bar back home.

 

     If these bars are potentially illegal, why have they been popping up around the internet and no one has been arrested or ordered to return them? Well, I have to refer you to the quote from the beginning of this guide. Plain and simple they are ALL fake. These sellers are hawking fantasy pieces that are nothing more than real bullion with fake stampings. That is, I hope they are real bullion. Since someone probably poured and applied the stampings themselves in their garage or workshop, we really have no idea how pure the bullion is short of buying one and testing it ourselves. Now who wants to fork over an excessive amount of money for something like that?  In reality, since original bars are so rare, and as far as we know, not in any private hands, the courts have not had the opportunity to deal with something as controversial as this. If a private individual does own one, they are not dumb enough to try to sell it on an internet auction!

     The following is the only photo of REAL Nazi gold stamping that could be located . Notice the nice, finely detailed oval and the evenly stamped number “9”. It clearly shows that it was probably not done with a hammer and hand-held die like the fake bars are. (I do not have a photo of the whole bar) The expertise and time it would take to reproduce this quality greatly surpasses the mediocre worksmanship possessed by the counterfeiters producing today’s bars.

     While it is true that “gold has no smell”, and thus can be hard to trace, bars of monetary gold are always well-marked with smelt numbers, serial numbers, names and purity, and are registered in the books of the banks that own or hold them. To re-smelt gold bars which have provenance is unthinkable specifically because it causes known gold to “disappear” and “creates” new gold. In the hope of avoiding detection at a later date, the Belgian and Dutch gold that the Germans re-smelted at the Prussian State Mint in 1942 and 1943 was given German smelt numbers and stamped with dates arbitrarily selected from years before 1939.  (As quoted from www.usmbooks.com)

     The fakes do not have the professional quality of something that would be housed by a bank! This was a country that produced millions of beautiful die stamped medals, impressive looking coinage and amazing weaponry, but they didn’t possess the skill or time to make a decent bullion bar? And a lot of these fakes have pre-war or early-war dates when they had a lot more time and resources to do it. Come on now!

     Another laughable aspect noted about the majority of the fake bars is that a waffenamt stamp of WaA63 is always used. Why would the German army weapons agency have anything to do with bullion?!  Well first off, they don’t. The easiest answer is because the counterfeiter saw the WaA63 stamps for sale at the same website they bought their fake eagle stamp from! Here is an example from a well known weapon parts website and the stamps they have available.

 

     Below are some examples of the (insert appropriate expletive here) being sold today for insane prices. Some inexperienced or uninformed people are throwing away their hard-earned paycheck in a time when money can be very tight, so this guide was written in hopes of at least convincing one person to not give their money to these crooks.

     Now, if we take the following bars and overlay the photos of THE EXACT STAMP from where the website on top of one of the bars, you will see they line up perfectly! The red markings are the exact pictures of the stamp from the website. The only thing I did was color them so they were easier to see, rotate them and size to fit the photo (Cue trumpeting fanfare).

    I don’t think there is any question as to the origin of these bars. It is only a matter of time before they disappear from the market, but sadly the disgruntled sellers (AKA crooks) will find another way to make some dishonest money. These people in my mind are the lowest of the low. They need to be punished for their fraud. The military collecting market is continously flooded with counterfeit items from overseas, now it can be seen that we have scum in our own country trying to steal money from collectors.