Bob Pisani Revisited (a fresh look)

I recently completed a batch of data importing for the database project (link), which cleared a backlog of files waiting to be processed. The completion is a huge milestone because it finally provides the ability to search (almost instantly) for gold bars across 18 different funds, in records covering the last 18 months. So while Screwtape Files was the FIRST blog to identify Bob Pisani's mystery bar ZJ6752, we now return to the study armed with more information.

The goal remains the same ... "use the database to identify gold bars that we see in the media, for additional narrative". This gives us a larger picture for virtually no extra effort, because the hard work of building the index is already done.

Bob Pisani and me,
from the filmed-but-
never-aired documentary:
"Prosimians in the Attic".

First, a quick history for those who haven't encountered the ZJ6752 story - CNBC's Bob Pisani presented a small series on gold in 2011. We're interested in serial numbers for bars that appear on camera. I studied the clips to find more serial numbers than just ZJ6752. These are the video references (in order most interesting to least), with the ones I've taken images from, in bold. Note that the only high-resolution footage I could find were the advertisements on youtube.

1. "Gold Rush: The Mother Lode" (4.55) cnbc link
2. "The King of Refineries" (4.28) cnbc link
3. "Gold Mine" (1.56) cnbc link
4. "Gold Rush: The Bullion Trail" (4.11) cnbc link
5. High Definition Advert for the Series # 1 (0.31) youtube link
6. High Definition Advert for the Series # 2 (0.38) youtube link

Clip #1 is the one referenced by the 2011 Zero Hedge article - the ZJ6752 bar is obviously the one most clearly shown since Bob flips it in front of the camera. The only commentator I know of looking for additional serial numbers was 'Conrad Murray' in the Zero Hedge comments section (link):

Conrad Murray says: "Frame at 1:31, 12 bars showing numbers.
2 are on the most recent bar list (didn't check all others)
36431 METALOR TECHNOLOGIES HK
38431 METALOR TECHNOLOGIES HK"

I want to put right a misconception - those numbers shown are most likely NOT serial numbers (95% sure). Typically, the serial number markings are found on the top of the bar - which these days, is preferred for London Good Delivery bars (ref: Page 9 "Gold bars must be marked on the larger surface (the cast surface at the top of the mould) of the two main surfaces of the bar."). The bars in the shot above look very much like the US Mint 'bricks' with the five-digit number on the end, so we highly doubt those are Metalor bars.

This image is from a documentary on the Federal reserve. The shape and make
of the bars are a good match, but unfortunately the number appears to
indicate the 'batch' or something else, but it's not the serial number.

The US Mint bars are actually quite interesting - we catch sight of a few of those brick shapes in the Bank of England vault (professor and queen) tours. But that is another study for another time ... back to Bob Pisani ... unfortunately, the camera moves around too fast to spot the serial numbers on the other bars in the rest of the clip. Conrad speaks of another clue: "At 3:13 bar is weighed, 394.024."

The gross weight (oz) for one of the bars they are weighing (in video clip #1 @ 3:13).

That's a good start - in terms of investigation strategy. Barely satisfied however, I dug deeper. The weighing exercise is being referenced against a list seen at 3:22, where a guy is checking them off.

Video clip # 1 @ 3.22 - bar list of JMBRAM bars (Johnson Matthey Limited, Brampton Ontario)

Because we have a database, finding these numbers is easy - but first let's take a look at what's going on there, in detail. The column in the middle is the fineness/assay, the column on the far right is the fine weight (oz). If you look closely, you can see (2nd column) that the refiner brand is 'JBRAM' which also matches the logo we see on the bars being weighed. The serial number is to the far left (but can't be made out except that it has 6 digits). The pen marks indicate the bars which have a slightly different gross weight ... i.e. the ones with the ticks (e.g. 394.000 highlighted) are probably the exact scale weight, the ones with additional numbers are off by 0.025 of an ounce, and the guy has presumably written the weight as it appeared on their scales (e.g. 391.150 according to the list, but is apparently 391.175).

from earlier graphic, using Photoshop to rotate the image.

This is a very small variance in the weight (to visualize, think of one of those tiny 1/10oz coins, and split that into a four pieces), it also gives us a data indicator to look for later when comparing serial numbers. i.e. our new 'exact match' between vaults should allow for plus or minus 0.025 oz. Again, I digress. We have a bunch of data points we can match ... brand, weight, gross oz, fine oz and we know that the serial numbers are 6 digits in length (note, for this exercise, we will use their 'new' weight marked in pen).

Limit of reading error is large and many lines are unreadable, however I've got photoshop handy which lets me zoom and resize (plus I've lots of experience with the Google Captcha images). For the numbers which are readable I get TEN EXACT MATCHES from the sheet of paper, for bars held in GLD. Most of these show up in the GLD list on 5th August 2011, so this (presumably) sets an approximate date for when the filming took place.

The spreadsheet below contains the data and references for these 10 bars, including relevant links to our GLD document archive, in case you want to do any matches of your own. The bars identified start with "18####", which you can also see from the piece of paper. It's worth noting that these bars didn't stay registered in GLD for long - NINE disappear from the GLD registry by 25th August 2011, the tenth one is still there - JOHNSON MATTHEY BRAMPTON '187256' weighing 400.300 gross oz, fineness 9957. Verification: GLD.20130111.144338.Barlist.pdf (Page 1832). This doesn't mean these bars are not still in the vault, it simply means we don't know where they are presently.

20130112_checklist_reconstruction.xls

So when we see them weighing and stacking the bars, these are/were real bars in GLD too. The mathematicians out there may be pondering the probability of a false match (which is always possible inside such a large sample set) ... someone else can work it out ... the ten bars were matched (with no duplicates) on a six-digit weight, 4-digit fineness and barserial (length 6). How many 6-digit JOHNSON MATTHEY BRAMPTON bars are in existence? In total, we have records for over 45,000 in the database (which includes other funds).

Clip #1 @ 3:26 - stacking the JMBRAM bars which were being weighed.
Although the full serial number cannot be made out, the first two digits
appears to be "18####', which correlates nicely with our found data.

So, did the other video clips also have some good bar pictures? Yes they did - but the matching had mixed results ... The three bars in the foreground below are clearly marked "ZH9925", "ZH9924" and "ZH9923" (Rand Refinery bars) - all three which appear briefly in the Metal Securities Limited Gold (ETF Securities) data during March 2011 through to May 2011, but they seem to disappear from the records in June 2011 and they haven't shown up anywhere since. You'll note that the 'year produced' is 2009, so in theory they have been in a vault for a while. If we assume that the footage was taken at the time of the CNBC visit, then this suggests the bars were still in the HSBC vault even after they appeared briefly on the ETF Securities list (fancy that) ... this is what we call 'dark bullion' (because it appears to be there but is not showing on any lists).

Clip #5 (0.02) high res Rand Refinery Serial numbers.
Made an appearance briefly in ETF Securities (London).
VERIFICATION: ETF.20110512.000000.WebsiteBarList2011.05.12.xls
(Worksheet "MSL Gold", Rows 4931-4933)

From here however, the trail goes dark. The rand refinery clip (Clip #2) has lots of highly-visible serial numbers, but there are no matches. I'm still going to show the image however, because we do have 323 records in the 'XP' series - most of which appear in GLD, but also a few in GoldMoney Zurich.

NO MATCH for these. Pity.

^^^ from the Rand Refinery visit, these bars are on a trolley. (Clip 5 @ 0:23)
What a shame we found Zero matches for these serials.

Not wanting to restrict myself just to CNBC video clips, the following images of LBMA 400oz Gold Bars have been forwarded from Bron Suchecki and Nick Laird, with my added commentary. Please note that many images were looked at, but these were the only ones I found direct matches for (serial number, brand, weight, fineness). For a long time I've been wanting to get an inside look into the vaults, and here it all is, in graphic detail. Folks, these bars have a story.

^^^ From BullionVault's image library - a Johnson Matthey Bar: serial 21592, fineness 9976 - has been with BullionVault London at least since May 2011 (my records started, and was still there in August 2012). Having this photo demonstrates my interest in this exercise - from the photo we now know that the bar was produced in "2004" (which probably also applies to some of the bars from that 'batch' as well). VERIFICATION: BGL.20120809.122504.NeilJGeddes.pdf (Page 4, Line 4)

^^^ Rand Refinery ZA7798 and ZA7796 (red highlighted) are currently in GLD (and has been since the start of my records in June 2011), the vault is HSBC London. The fineness of both these bars in the database is 9989. Similar to the bar above, now we know that the 'ZA' series was produced in 2009, which is useful since we have records for 1,962 'ZA' bars. The other ZA bars in the picture are unaccounted for, but in theory they are in the same physical vault as the ones we know about. I have no idea where or when the picture was taken, sorry. VERIFICATION: GLD.20130111.144338.Barlist.pdf (Page 1547 - roughly the middle of the page for both)

^^^ This is a Russian Bar (OJSC Krastvetmet, Krasnoyarsk) whose current location is with ETF Securities in London. We know from the database that it was listed as early as mid-Dec-2011 as 'A016707' and then February 2012 they adjusted the serial number record to '2011A016707' to reflect the year, so that checks out. The bar is still there. We also have 137 bars on record which match the (7 digit series). The serial number adjustment is in line with the LBMA best-practice requirements and is something we will have to build into the database structure when we are analysing vault movements. The word in the circle is 'Russia' in Russian. picture source: internet (ack. David Levenson). VERIFICATION: ETF.20130112.015448.WebsiteBarList2013.01.11.xls (Worksheet: "MSL Gold", row 11315)

Finally, a HUGE disappointment was the lack of matches from what otherwise should have been a jackpot of serial bar correlations. I recently purchased a new LBMA publication titled 'The London Good Delivery List - Building a Global Brand 1750-2010' (link), which has the distinguishing feature of a gold-bar photo shoot. It's quite a magnificent shot but unfortunately as far as 'matches with ETF-held bars', there are no correlations. However this is not to say that we haven't gained any information from the picture - we now have some good references for bar markings and also year of production (batch runs). I am considering framing the cover (the contents of the book is also excellent and useful for my research into historically accredited refiners).

^^^ Image borrowed (from their website) for illustration. The double A4 cover shows
76 assembled bars and dedicates a page to explaining their origins - most come from
the Bank of England vault. Unfortunately none of these appear to be from an ETF.

Result? A tiny bit closer to the real world that sits behind the abstract lists. Tungsten? These photos we've seen just only represent a tiny proportion of the number of the bars out there, so it's still possible - but the main problem is that as more details emerge through study, the conspiracy theories can only be taken with increasing amounts of salt. For example, these folk (talking about ZJ6752) were deadly serious at the time they did the audio. Real question is; how many more similar stories can also be solved through the knowledge of just a few additional facts?

p.s. I have used my archived documents as links so that the article links stay relevant. The normal links are GLD and ETF Securities, if you want to verify against the originals too. The renaming process I use for my archive is described here (and I do not alter the original source).

p.p.s. No Chinese-refined London Good Delivery bars have yet been found in the extended data set