[RightWhale]

Looks about right. Note some of the wood slats are bending under the weight. The little forklift at the local cement factory can handle the load.

[evets]

I would have to inspect it personally to give an accurate estimate...

[r9etb]

I was thinking that this is a pretty rinky-tink looking operation -- I mean, really: hand-lettered labels thumb-tacked to the wooden pallets?

Sumpin' seems wrong with this picture....

[Greg_99]

Gold is made into a large number of different bars of different weights. The most well known are the large 'London Good Delivery Bars' which are traded internationally. These weigh about 400 Troy Ounces, i.e. 12.5 kg/ 27 lbs. Each. Others are denominated in kilogrammes, grammes, troy ounces, etc. In grammes, bars range from 1 g up to 10 kg. In troy oz, from 1/10 tr.oz. up to 400 tr.oz.. Other bars include tola bars and Tael bars

I copied this from gold.com

[Hank Rearden]

An interesting question for a Friday!

I don't have time to run real numbers, but if the load paths are directly through the bars and wood to ground and if the wood is sufficiently strong in compression, it looks real to me.

Take a look at the first full-view stack of pallets on the right. Just below the top pallet, it appears to be sitting on a sheet of 3/4" or 1" plywood. Notice how the very edge of the plywood is bending down under the weight - it would take a lot of weight to bend that wood with such a short moment arm (or lever length). So that top pallet of gold is probably real to provide enough weight to do that.

Fun speculation, though!

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

That one on the lesft, yeah, that one, that's mine.

[FormerACLUmember]

If really gold, the weight would snap the plywood sheets. I say its fake.

[Greg_99]

each pallet only weighs 2160 lbs.

[coloradan]

Where did you get a picture of my basement?!

[Paradox]

http://www.streettracksgoldshares.com/images/ Check it out, you can see other angles and images of the same.

[evets]

Looks like chocolate in my opinion.

[ken5050]

Paging Odd Job!!

[Alberta's Child]

This civil engineer thinks the photo looks reasonable. Notice how low each stack on each pallet is . . . with most products, these pallets would be stacked with more things on top of them.

My only question involves the pallets at the bottom of the stacks . . . How do they hold up the entire load above them without breaking?

[Beckwith]

Looks like the vaults at the Depository Trust company down in the Wall Street district.

[Sacajaweau]

Typical gold bar is 400 troy ounces or 27.4 lbs.

[H. Paul Pressler IV]

Have then FedEx a pallet or two to my place and I will have an answer for you within a week.

[exDemocratbutnotRepubican]

If you look at the center of each stack of gold, there is a stack of ingots direstly under the central beam of each pallet. The weight of the pallets is therefore concentrated onthe gold beneath it and the compresive strength of the blocks of solid wood underneath.

It's possible.

[gondramB]

I get that at $500 per troy ounce that the gold would occupy about 111 cubic feet of gold or a 10X11 room stacked one foot deep.

(((1e9 / 500) / 12) * (373 / 453.6)) / 64) / 19.3 = 110.955096

Assuming 12 troy ounces to the troy pound
373 grams/troy pound
453.6 grams per regular pound
one cubic foot of water =64 pounds
the density of gold is 19.3 times as much as water

[Ditto]

At about 100# per ingot

Na. I'd say around 35-40 lbs each. (I got to hold one a while back --- just couldn't figure out how to stuff it in my pocket without that damn guard noticing.)

[marktwain]

"I rough-count approx. 150 pallets in sight, with approx. 80 bars per pallet. At about 100# per ingot, six pallets high, that makes each stack of pallets weigh about 48,000 freaking pounds!!"

Let us look at this from another angle, Travis. One billion dollars in gold is about 170,000 lbs at $500 per ounce.

If you have 150 pallets, you are only looking at 1,111 lbs per pallet, which is not unbelievable.

On the other side, 1,100 pounds of gold would be less than one cubic foot in volume. This would be only about 13.8 lbs per bar.