I am really mad right now. So, I went to a coin shop today, a place where I've done a lot of business before (probable even Houston's most reputable coin shop), and I bought 10 ounces of silver - 10 1oz silver bars. 5 of the bars are from Sunshine Minting, the other 5 from Scottsdale Mint - both reputable bullion mints.
When I got home, I was going to put them away and, like I always do, I tested them first. There are a lot of ways to test silver, some destructive, some non-destructive. For me, the first test is with a rare earth magnet. If it passes this test, the other tests aren't necessary (at least for me). The Sunshine bars were fine. But when I tested the Scottsdale bars, they failed the magnet test. So I weighed them, but they weighed correctly. I still had the other bars in front of me, so I did a visual dimensional inspection. Failed! The bars in question were much thicker than the real ones. This explained the weight being correct.
At this point, comes the destructive testing. If it's not silver, no harm done because it's worthless anyway. If it is silver, it will blemish the silver. However, it really doesn't matter on bullion bars because they have no collectability (for the most part) - the value is in the weight of the silver. If it were a piece of jewelry or a rare coin, that would be different. So, for testing, you use a solution of nitric and muriatic acid. The solution is an orangish-brown and you just put a couple of drops on the item and wait about 30 seconds. If it's real, the solution will remain the same color. If it's fake, the solution will turn blue. The longer it remains on the item, the bluer it gets. Well, this one was so blue that it was singing BB King songs.
I've bought a lot of silver in my day and I've never been burned, but there is a first time for everything. I'm not going to disclose the name of the shop just yet. I don't think they intentionally sold me fake silver, they just didn't check it when they purchased it. I think they'll swap it out for 5 more bars and I'll be happy and just consider the matter closed. But if they give me any grief I will leave them a negative review on every website I can, and file a claim with the BBB.