The Search for a Universal Bar Number

In the bullion bars database we have the signatures for about 250,000 gold bars and 800,000 silver bars. I'm at the stage now where I need a consistent referencing number — currently the unique identifiers get created fresh each time I import a major set of data, which solves a bunch of other problems but makes it difficult to permanently catalog interesting bars. If you're not into 'Barspotting' please feel free to tune out - this is another of those posts where I'm just talking out loud, trying to solve some boring questions open for discussion.

Screwtales: Fed Gold and German Tanks

Satisfied that GM Jenkins has the skinny on gold price movements, I've been busy in the other cellar trying to finish a new database article. A few readers asked me to look at the National Geographic documentary titled 'Inside Americas Money Vault' (link link), specifically regarding bars shown in the first section of the clip - Bron Suchecki added a few more observations which made a small article worthwhile so here it is, for anyone interested.

With the new clip, we attempted the same as the recent 'Bob Pisani Revisited' article - to see if the database can tell a story about the gold bars we see on the camera. This is normally cut and dried - there is either a match in the data or there is not. There are plenty of great visuals in the clip, at high resolution.