Gold Standard Advocate Disappointed to Learn His Gold Is Actually Pyrite

Retired accountant and gold standard activist Bullion Pete Westlake has discovered that the 340 pounds of gold bars he purchased in 2019 from a website called TruePatriotGold.biz are, according to an independent assayer, 'not gold in any meaningful sense of the word.' The bars, which Westlake bought for $287,000 as a hedge against what he called 'the inevitable collapse of fiat currency,' are composed primarily of iron sulfide — commonly known as fool's gold — with a thin electroplated coating that the assayer described as 'surprisingly convincing from a distance of ten feet or more.' 'I held those bars. They were heavy. They were gold-colored,' Westlake said, sitting in the storage unit where he has kept the bars alongside a year's supply of freeze-dried meals and seventeen copies of End the Fed by Ron Paul. 'The website had an American flag and a picture of the Constitution. What more verification do you need?' Financial advisor Sandra Prudence, who reviewed Westlake's purchase, noted several red flags that might have been caught by 'any form of regulatory oversight, which Mr. Westlake has spent decades arguing against.' 'The website is gone. The company was registered in the Seychelles. The "certificate of purity" he received was printed on regular copy paper with what appears to be a Microsoft Word template,' Prudence said. 'In a regulated market, there are consumer protections for this sort of thing. In the market Mr. Westlake advocated for, there is a storage unit full of pyrite.' Westlake maintains that the incident 'actually proves the superiority of hard assets over fiat currency,' though he could not articulate how when pressed. He is now considering converting his remaining savings to silver, 'from a different website this time.'