Bitcoin No. 10, "The Ringer" And Provident Metals

A nice series of events has come together lately to provide some information that I hope is of use or interest to you dear readers.

I continue to dabble in Bitcoin, even with its price volatility.  Just today (Weds., 12 Nov) it has spiked majestically, up some $60 (or 16%)!  I was lucky to buy some BTC over the past 10 days or so while the price was in the $300s (so, yes, I "BTFD").

I bought an interesting new product from Fisch Instruments ("The Ringer"), a device which allows you to "ring" a gold coin (or silver or platinum) to check to see if it is counterfeit.  The Ringer will be discussed below.

Also discussed below (after The Ringer) is my buying experience with Provident Metals, which is one of at least four precious metals suppliers who accept Bitcoin as payment.

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I have now gained some experience in a limited amount of the Realm of Bitcoinistan.  Almsot all of this I have written about in my various pieces in the "Fun with Bitcoin for Beginners" series I started late in 2013 as I was learning.  Recently I have continued buying, mixing and now spending BTC (spending for just the second time).

It is hard for me to find actual PEOPLE to buy BTC from in my area, so I have found that the service that works the best for me is trucoin.com, who now will sell BTC by credit (or debit) cards in some 22 states.

Once I have the new BTC, I like to "mix" (aka "tumble" or "launder") them through two different services, in sequence if possible.  These are the same two I have written about before:

bitmixer.io

and

sharedcoin.com

So now I typically buy some BTC through trucoin, then mix them through (first) bitmixer and then through sharedcoin.  I believe the latter service is only offered through wallets used with blockchain.info's wallet service.  (blockchain.info is perhaps the premier monitoring service of the vital BlockChain infrastructure of Bitcoinistan, I strongly encourage everyone to tour their interesting website)

So, Step One (for me) is buying the BTC from trucoin (the only real drawback is that you do not have the privacy offered if you are able to buy from a person that you meet).  Once the incoming BTC are "confirmed (typically 8 - 15 minutes, but can be as long as 12 hours...), I then will send them (Step Two) on to bitmixer at the first opportunity.  Their service takes anywhere from 20 minutes - 12 hours, depending on confirmation times (I do not know why sometimes it takes so long to get transactions confirmed).  Once the BTC arrived "mixed" from bitmixer (and confirmed), I then run them through sharedcoin (Step Three), doing the pair of transactions bitmixer first and sharedcoin second means that I am likely to have less "taint" after multiple transactions...  Less taint (and running the BTC through two different mixers with different algorithms) also means that very few hackers *as best I can tell) would be able to follow my BTC trail.  Privacy.  It's one of the things that Bitcoin is all about...

Simple, right?  Steps One, Two and Three.  Well, OK, I have a system down with which I am reasonably familiar, but there can be snags...  The Bitcoin Ecosystem is a little clunky (like the Internet was in 1994, say, or PCs when they used early versions of DOS...).  Clunky and (alas) somewhat error-prone.

I have had three "incidents" (problems) come up in the past three weeks or so. All three were resolved OK, I lost nothing, but my BTC did seem to be in peril.  I will mention a bit on each incident, how it was resolved and how you can try to prevent similar from happening.  OK, but, the very nature of the infrastructure of Bitcoinistan now is that these kinds of things are likely to happen.

1. My problem with trucoin arose because I had a new debit issued (with a new expiration date, of course) which did not match the one in trucoin's system.  Updating and untangling this took part of a day, but I was not in a real hurry.  Their team solved the problem pretty quickly and amiably.  Bravo!  Apparently (a guess) my situation was that a debit card change was not programmed into their software, they actually thanked me for helping to improve their service.
2. I also had a problem with sharedcoin, although this was several weeks ago.  There was a glitch that happened right during the mixing process, I never got my BTC, yet they were sent (left my wallet).  Yikes!  I got through to their Help Desk, where the man suggested I try to recover the "intermediary wallets" (part of their mixing system).  And I was able to recover them.  Whew!  But, I learned an angle, so on balance the experience was worth it.
3. The other day I had my problem with bitmixer.  I am not sure exactly what happened, but the mixing process was taking very long, uncharacteristically so.  The transactions I sent them were possibly confusing as well.  It took a fair amount of back & forth with them to recover my BTC, my guess is that it was an involved process because they wanted to be sure that I was not scamming them and that they would be sure that the errant BTC actually DID belong to me, and that they needed to be SURE.  I am going to guess that there is a lot of scamming going on in Bitcoinistan, the fact that BTC transactions cannot be "undone" makes it attractive for cyberthieves to try taking away money...

I learned three general rules that may help:

--  Follow instructions carefully!  <== Very important!  Document your actions.
--  Work in a calm and considered way with the service provider, with all info possible
--  Be patient, some problems work themselves out on their own (confirmations)

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In my travels around the Internet, I found out that Fisch instruments (the makers of the fairly well known, well known among people who collect gold coins anyway, Fisch balances to detect counterfeit precious metal coins) also came out with a new product called "The Ringer".

The Ringer is a plastic device that holds a coin in its jaw and that has a plastic hammer that strikes the coin to produce a characteristic "ring".  Most metals (in coin form) will ring at least a little bit (but not post-1982 pennies (zinc), lead "coins" or, importantly, tungsten).  Here is a photo of The Ringer (black plastic near the back) with a page from their notebook (showing pictures of coins on the right) as well as my recently arrived platinum coin (a Platinum Eagle (USA) from Provident Metals (center-left):

The Ringer, page from Fisch (right) and Platinum Eagle from Provident

All coins will have a distinctive ring.  The exact sound-signature of the ring depends on the metal (or alloy), the exact shape of the coin, and its size.  A fairly easy way to learn about different rings of coins is to get a modern (1965 and later) quarter and a silver quarter (1964 and earlier, you know, when those coins were made with silver), and drop one of each onto a hard surface (a granite countertop or bathroom tiling both work fine).  The silver quarter has a ring that is very distinctive vs the modern "clad" quarters.

The Ringer is precision-made to test the ring of coins, it works best on 1 oz coins, but will work on smaller ones as well.  I have not yet tested The Ringer on smaller coins, but I did test them on a few 1 oz precious metals coins I have in my own collection.  Here is a photo of my recently arrived platinum coin mounted in the jaw of The Ringer, ready to be tested:

The plastic hammer is not shown distinctly here, but is just below the left edge of the coin.

The Ringer is best used with a pen (or screwdriver in my case) to bend the hammer down so it will snap up and strike the left edge of the coin:

When the hammer strikes the coin, the coin will have a distinctive ring that is somewhat different than any other different coin.  In the case of a Platinum Eagle, it rings, but the ring is subdued and goes away in less than one second.  Here are some other "quick & dirty" results from my coin testing two nights ago (all 1 oz coins):

--  Platinum Maple (Canada), a dull ring similar to the Pt Eagle tested above
--  Palladium Maple, a nice ring, somewhat high tone, went on for several seconds
--  Silver Eagle, a decent ring, lasted several seconds
--  Gold Eagle, a very nice ring, went on and on (like a Chateau Latour...), beautiful!
--  Gold Buffalo (USA), a dull ring
--  Gold Kangaroo (Australia), another dull ring

I am very satisfied with The Ringer and will likely buy another.  And probably one of their balancesa as well (to test weight and dimensions of Gold Eagles).  The Ringer cost me $104.00 (delivered), it took a bit over a week to arrive from when I mailed my check.

See more (including an audio as well as a video) at their website: thefisch.com.

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I was also very satisfied with my just arrived Pt Eagle from Provident Metals.  I bought the 2014 piece, which I have not seen (yet) at the coin shops I have been to.

The US Mint only re-started minting them after a pause of about six or seven years.  {latinum Eagles are kind-of hard to find!  For me anyway.  Also the price that Provident offers them at is at least $50 less than the coin shops (if the latter had them).

I received the coin in three business days after ordering.

I also paid with Bitcoin!  This was the second purchase I have made with Bitcoin (I bought a 0.25 oz Gold Eagle late last year).  They do want 1% more for BTC payment (vs. a wire transfer or check), but that is not much for the convenience and speed of paying by BTC.

Provident has a wonderful selection of precious metal coins!  Here is a link to their 2014 Platinum Eagle:

http://www.providentmetals.com/2014-1-oz-american-platinum-eagle.html

Provident has some kind of relationship with Elemetal LLC, my guess is that Elemetal owns Provident, but I am not sure of that, they do, at a minimum, have a special relationship.  See the very interesting website of Elemetal LLC:

http://www.elemetal.com/

Elemetal is a prime advertiser in American Hard Assets, the magazine I review on occasion.  I mentioned a while back that I was eventually going to try to learn more about Elemetal, as it seems to be very large (it owns Ohio Precious Metals, the largest gold refiner in the USA for example).

Watch this space, then...