Billion Dollar Photo? Civil Engineer Opinion Wanted (Vanity)

Street Tracks Gold Shares ^ | Dec 9, 2005 | Travis McGee

[Deguello]

Entrance through the AC duct noted.

[uglybiker]

Looks legit to me!

[US_MilitaryRules]

If any of you had any smarts you would notice that the bars are almost touching the 2 x 4's! Translated downward force is tapered to the 2x4's. The gold bars do not sag like the oak. Therefore the gold is sitting on the 2x4's! If the bars were turned 90 degrees you would have a lot of broken pallets

[Travis McGee]

Hey, that's MY Nigerian ex-president's gold!

[uglybiker]

Naw! Can't be! His neice Sheniqwa Nugulumboola emailed this pic to me personally! All I need to do is set up an account at my bank, and then send her "five thouseands of dollars American" to cover the shipping costs and I get "6 bilion$ dollars American dollars" for my troubles!

I think it's a fair cut.

[Tench_Coxe]

If you'll notice how they're stacked.
The bars in the center are stacked directly over the center piece of wood, it puts the wood in compression. The bars to either side are stacked across the span of the wood slats, in order to distribute weight to the supporting lengths of wood on either side. The pallets also looked to be stacked such that the weight from the upper pallet is transmitted down through the supporting wood to the floor.
I'd say it looks pretty real, although if their were termites, I sure wouldn't want to be standing next to the stack when it gives.

[FormerACLUmember]

The money shot of a Nigerian scam. LOL!

"Not a hoax".... "All true"

LMAO!

[Travis McGee]

No, Sheniqwa Nugulumboola is in prison in Aquiba now, don't you keep up? To get the gold, I'm going to send 10,000 to her cousin in Lagos to pay her ransom, and THEN I get the secret Swiss bank account numbers.

[Travis McGee]

Yeah, I'm buying it's legit now.

[Lancey Howard]

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

Yes, that was my first thought, also. Additionally (not to sound obsessive/compulsive or anything) it is surprising that there is not near-perfect symmetry to the stacks. Different stacks have different numbers of bars, etc. You would think each pallet would be identically and neatly and evenly stacked and lined up for ease of inventory, auditing and security.