If you’d rather not mess around with Bitcoin, consider this more traditional investment opportunity coming to you straight from the New York Sheriff’s Office. Today, there will be a Sheriff’s sale of 40 gold bullion bars, alongside other valuables.
The contents of the sale were seized from diamond dealer Aaron Chitrick Purec in 2017 when he lost a judgment filed by New York Community Bank. Per an announcement put out by Joseph Fucito, Sheriff of NYC, they will include 164 clear stones, 6 rings with clear stones, three metal necklaces with clear stones, and 71 metal bracelets with clear stones, in addition to the gold bars.
New York is the center of the world’s gold. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s gold vault at its peak contained over 12,000 tons of monetary gold. In 2019, the vault housed approximately 497,000 gold bars — a weight of about 6,190 tons. The New York vault today remains the world’s largest known depository of monetary gold.
The standard gold bar held by central banks and traded among bullion dealers is 12.4 kilograms, around 27lbs (or 400-troy-ounce in traders’ terms). Each 12.4kg bar would be worth over $730,000 at current rates. The weight of the bullion bars on offer is not stated.
The announcement also stresses that any clear stone items will be in closed packets and “will not be opened prior to or during the sale.” We’re not sure if that applies to the gold bars as well, though if you’ve ever watched Babylon Berlin on Netflix you probably already know to be very suspicious of gold bars that can’t be inspected…