Chapter Four — The Gold and Coin Market

Documented
Back to The Need to Prevent Counterfeiting

Where Risk Can Sometimes Remain Silent for Years

Someone buys a gold plaque, files the invoice among their papers, and puts the gold away in a box or safe. They do not intend to weigh it again tomorrow or visit a laboratory next week to check its fineness. The transaction is over, and from that moment those few grams of metal become, in the owner's mind, part of their assets.

Months or even years pass without the gold asking anything of them.

This silence is an important difference between this market and many other goods. A defective product usually gives itself away eventually: a machine stops working, a part breaks, or the product's quality fails to match the seller's promise. But a coin, plaque, or piece of melted gold can remain in a safe for years without any sign of trouble, while its owner counts its value as part of their financial security.

The problem may emerge at the worst possible moment: when the owner goes back to the gold because they need money, rather than simply to look at it or keep it safe.

On that day, the plaque comes out of its sealed packaging and its weight does not match. The melted gold is tested again, and its fineness differs from what was stated at purchase. A coin assumed genuine for years turns out to have a different identity. Or the name, code, or packaging that lent credibility to the product all that time proves to lack the backing the buyer imagined.

At that moment, the loss is more than the price difference between genuine and counterfeit. The owner discovers that the figure they have carried in their mind as “savings” was inaccurate from the start.

This is what makes the gold market one of the most serious settings for discussing counterfeiting prevention. A great deal of value is concentrated in a small volume; the product can be traded again; and many of its important characteristics—from actual fineness and weight to the relationship between a code, assay mark, or packaging and the product itself—cannot be established by an ordinary buyer simply looking at it.

Counterfeiting in this market therefore involves more than making an imitation piece of metal. Sometimes what is falsified is our reason for trusting that metal.

A number, name, card, test result, or code may look entirely official while being attached to a product it does not belong to. The more the market needs such signals to speed up transactions, the stronger the fraudster's incentive to target those very signals.

The answer cannot therefore be simply that “people should be more careful.”

Buyers should ask questions, obtain invoices, and take the transaction route seriously. But someone buying a few grams of gold as savings is not supposed to be an assayer, packaging inspector, and code-detection specialist as well. If product security exists only when the final buyer can personally test all these things, the main weakness remains somewhere earlier in the chain.

Prevention in the gold market must begin long before the product is placed on the counter in front of a customer.

When Counterfeiting Moves Beyond the Customer and Into the Market Itself

In Aban 1403 (Solar Hijri), a case emerged in Tehran whose significance for our discussion exceeds the number of items discovered.

According to Tehran's criminal investigation police, it began when a gold shop accepted a 50-gram piece of melted gold and discovered it was counterfeit after the seller had left. Subsequent investigations uncovered a network that, police said, made counterfeit melted gold and coins and supplied them through various people to gold retailers and wholesalers. Police reported finding more than one kilogram of melted gold, 20 counterfeit coins, and equipment for applying recognized market markings, and said 30 complainants had been identified by that stage.[1]

Even if the story had ended there, it would have been an important case. But the more troubling part lay elsewhere. Police stated that one buyer had resold half a kilogram of this counterfeit gold to market wholesalers.[1]

At this point, the counterfeit is no longer moving only between counterfeiter and victim.

Illegitimate goods have entered a chain whose participants may each regard themselves as part of the formal market. The second buyer may not have intended fraud and may have been deceived themselves. But the product now in their inventory has acquired a transaction history and can be sold again.

Under these conditions, a counterfeit acquires a past.

This matters especially in gold because liquidity is one of its attractions. What the buyer sees as an advantage—the relative ease of resale—can also benefit the counterfeiter if controls are weak. Every time an illegitimate product passes undetected through another link, identifying its point of entry becomes harder.

The simple relationship of “seller versus buyer” is therefore inadequate for analyzing this market. Honest sellers need prevention too. So do honest wholesalers. Even a manufacturer whose name is printed on a counterfeit may be a victim.

Anti-counterfeiting here is no longer solely a defense of consumers. It defends the possibility of trust between the market's own participants.

Behind Every Shop Window Stands a Chain

When customers enter a gold shop, they see the last few minutes of an item's commercial life. Before that, depending on the product, a manufacturer, refiner, assay center, wholesaler, bulk supplier, packager, and several trade businesses may have been involved. For bars and plaques, the manufacturer's code and mark become more important; official coins bring in the identity of the minting authority; and online sales add the platform, vault, supervisory system, and delivery mechanism.

Each link offers an opportunity to build trust and, at the same time, a possible point of failure.

If the manufacturer records incorrect specifications, later checks become harder. If a test result cannot retain its connection to the piece, a valid number can legitimize an illegitimate product. If a wholesaler is unsure of its origin, one bad incoming item can spread among several businesses. If the retailer trusts only the package and name, the final professional opportunity to intervene before the product reaches the public is lost.

We therefore need to look at the gold market from three angles at once: what is traded, how it is traded, and which part of the truth about the product can be manipulated.

A new ring, a piece of melted gold, a bar, a Parsian gold plaque, an official coin, and a few grams of gold recorded in an app are all “gold” in everyday language. Yet their risk pathways differ.

For manufactured gold articles, the issue may be the weight of stones, whether an item is new or used, its fineness, or the price calculation. For melted gold, the connection between the piece and its assay result becomes vital. For Parsian plaques, weight, fineness, card, sealed packaging, manufacturer name, and code come together. For coins, the product's official identity must also be preserved. In online sales, we may need to ask what asset stands behind the number on the screen even before asking about fineness.

Prevention becomes serious when it recognizes these differences. A blanket prescription of “buy only from a reputable seller” or “check the code” is too simple.

Manufactured Gold Articles: Transaction Authenticity Does Not End with Fineness

Suppose someone buys a ring that really is 18-karat gold. Does that fact alone establish that the entire transaction was clear and unambiguous?

Not necessarily.

The weight on the scale may include stones or components that are not gold. The final amount is not just the metal's price either: workmanship charges, commission, and the seller's profit also contribute. None is inherently a violation. The maker is paid for the work, and the seller earns a profit. The problem begins when the buyer cannot tell exactly how the money is divided among these components.

Article 26 of the Value Added Tax Act also distinguishes the gold itself, workmanship charges, commission, and the seller's profit, and provides for these components to be itemized on invoices when transactions in this field are recorded.[2] The law was written for taxation, not to formulate a theory of anti-counterfeiting. Yet it yields a useful principle for this discussion: a component of transaction value that is more clearly named and recorded is less able to hide behind a single total.

This is where the invoice becomes important. In its notice on essential invoice information, the Tehran Gold and Jewelry Union also emphasizes recording transaction and party details.[14]

An invoice is not supposed to protect the buyer from every risk. It too can be incomplete or even forged. But a transaction with no memory leaves almost everything, on the day of a dispute, to the parties' spoken accounts.

In the gold market, the memory of a transaction is part of its security.

Secondhand Gold: Sometimes the Metal Is Genuine but the Transaction's Story Is Not

Secondhand gold is not necessarily an illegitimate product. The same metal can change owners many times without its fineness changing merely because it has been used. Here, the issue is more about the product's condition and how it is presented.

There is no problem if a used item is offered as used. But if its history is deliberately erased and the customer makes a different decision believing it is new, the deception lies in the transaction's story, not the material.

The distinction matters legally and technically. Not every improper market practice should be called “counterfeiting.” Overcharging, delivering less weight or quantity than billed, misdescription, incorrect workmanship charges, and fraud may each fall under a different heading.

If every loss is counterfeiting, the word itself no longer tells us much.

This boundary does not make other forms of deception unimportant. On the contrary, counterfeiting thrives where the essential information about a transaction has become habitually obscure.

Melted Gold: The Number Can Be Right and the Transaction Wrong

Melted gold says little through its appearance. To a nonspecialist buyer, an irregular piece of metal by itself reveals little about its fineness or history. Much of the trust therefore shifts to information outside the metal: weight, assay result, assay mark, laboratory, seller, and invoice.

A particular risk arises here that differs from “making up a false number.”

The test result may be entirely genuine yet not belong to this piece.

The assay mark may be genuine yet used on a product that was not the subject of the test.

This deception is dangerous because some of the evidence really is valid. The counterfeiter need not forge everything. Breaking one relationship and moving a valid signal elsewhere is enough.

That is why “it has an assay mark” means little on its own. The more important question is where that mark came from, which sample it concerned, and how we can establish that it still belongs to this piece.

In such an architecture, an assay center is more than a producer of numbers. The greater the credibility of a test result, the more valuable its misuse becomes. Accurate assaying is not the only issue: as far as possible, the relationship between sample, result, and piece must also remain defensible.

Correct science attached to the wrong object does not make a transaction right.

The Tehran case reinforces this point. According to police, the counterfeit melted gold reached not only ordinary consumers but also market professionals.[1] If participants with trade knowledge and experience can be deceived, expectations of ordinary customers must be more realistic.

Gold Bars: An Official Appearance Itself Requires Proof

Compared with melted gold, a bar looks more orderly and official. Weight, fineness, manufacturer mark, serial number, packaging, and sometimes a certificate all reinforce the impression of a precise, controlled product.

That expectation increases responsibility.

The international standard ISO 24018:2020, for cast one-kilogram gold bars, specifies matters including requirements, test methods, inspection, marking, packaging, transport, storage, and quality certification. It was developed by ISO/TC 174, the technical committee for jewelry and precious metals, and was reviewed and confirmed in 2025.[3]

The standard applies to that defined scope and should not be generalized to every bar and plaque in Iran's market. Its value here lies elsewhere: an investment product circulating among people and markets needs specifications that can be checked, rather than merely stated.

An industrial appearance is not evidence in itself.

A standard number printed on packaging does not establish conformity either. As we will see in the Parsian case, even an official-looking code can be counterfeited.

Transparent plastic has yet to earn a degree in metallurgy.

Parsian: A Small Laboratory for Seeing Almost Every Anti-Counterfeiting Weakness

A Parsian gold plaque does not look complicated: a small amount of gold, a stated weight, a card, the manufacturer's name, and usually press-sealed packaging. This apparent simplicity has made it familiar as a gift and a vehicle for small savings.

From an anti-counterfeiting perspective, however, this small product brings together almost the entire problem.

The metal must be right. The fineness must be right. The weight must match the card. The card must belong to the real manufacturer. The code must be valid. The packaging itself must not be replaceable or reusable. Above all, these components must connect to the very plaque inside the package.

If each acquires a life of its own, the counterfeiter gains room to work.

In Tir 1404 (Solar Hijri), the Tehran Province Directorate-General of Standards published the results of seven joint inspections of online gold retailers. Inspectors identified and seized 161 manufactured articles and plaques lacking identification codes. They also sampled 44 manufactured articles and Parsian plaques for fineness testing; 13 cases of nonconformity with the official fineness were reported. The official report explicitly included “plaques inside sealed packaging (Parsian)” among the products examined.[4]

This ratio should not be generalized to the whole market. 13 out of 44 selected samples in a regulatory inspection program is not a prevalence estimate for Parsian products with below-standard fineness across Iran. But it matters greatly for another reason: it shows that low fineness and uncoded products have been observed in actual supply, rather than being hypotheses invented to frighten the reader.

Two months later, the problem took another form. The Tehran Gold and Jewelry Union warned of counterfeit Parsian products under several brand names. According to the published report, these products bore a forged standards code attributed to Isfahan.[5]

The case is almost a complete lesson in security theater.

If we have spent years telling customers to “check that there is a code,” the fraudster targets the code itself. If we have said “trust the sealed card,” the card and packaging become worth counterfeiting. Any signal with the power to build trust can sooner or later become an attack target.

A security feature provides security only when it is more than difficult to counterfeit: its connection to a real authority must also be verifiable.

Ardabil: When the Imitation Enters the Market Smartly Dressed

In Mordad 1404 (Solar Hijri), Ardabil's Directorate-General of Industry, Mine and Trade announced the discovery of 800 items described in IRNA's report as “counterfeit gift coins.” According to that report, the pieces were in sealed packaging and were made mainly of copper.[6]

Drawing on the author's specialist knowledge of this case and market, this book places these examples in the Parsian gold plaque family. This must be distinguished from the news report itself: IRNA's public report did not explicitly use the word “Parsian.” The news source therefore supports only what it states; responsibility for the specialist classification rests with the author.

Even without that specialist explanation, however, one striking fact remains: imitation products in sealed packaging were ready to enter the market.[6]

Here the packaging had not merely failed to stop counterfeiting; it could have enhanced the product's appearance. To many buyers, a tidy package, printed card, and professional image naturally suggest order and credibility.

The feeling itself is not where the problem begins. Society needs signals of trust. The problem arises when a package acquires the appearance of security but its connection to the actual metal inside cannot be defended.

This is usually how the cotton-stuffed champion of anti-counterfeiting enters the arena: the outfit is not bad. The question is what stands behind it.

Mashhad: An Understandable Response That Is Still Not a Complete Solution

In Khordad 1405 (Solar Hijri), the Mashhad Gold, Jewelry, Silver and Coin Trade Union took a different approach. Its official notice stated that, because of violations including short weight and even imitation products, manufacturers must supply Parsian plaques loose, without press-sealed cards, and that the restriction must also apply to wholesalers and retailers.[7]

In one respect, the decision is entirely understandable. Where a pressed card prevents checking the plaque's own weight, and that barrier has been used to conceal underweight or imitation pieces, making inspection and weighing possible can immediately reduce some of the risk.

But this is precisely where we must distinguish a “containment measure” from a “prevention system.”

Removing the pressed card makes hidden-weight problems somewhat more visible. But what about fineness? The manufacturer's identity? Counterfeit cards and brands? The product's circulation history? If an item entered wholesale trade with false specifications from the outset, how does leaving it unpackaged clarify its origin?

An earlier Mashhad union notice was even more explicit. It said that sealed and pressed packaging made the weight and fineness of Parsian plaques difficult to establish, and reported forged cards of reputable manufacturers, weights below the stated figure, and substitution with imitations. It then advised trade colleagues to remove products from their packaging and test them when buying.[7]

This advice makes more sense for a trade professional, who has scales, access to tools, and market experience. But transferring the same logic to the final buyer without designing earlier protective layers creates a new problem.

What does an ordinary buyer have?

They have no calibrated scale or assaying equipment. They cannot take every plaque to a laboratory. Even if they know its exact weight, correct weight still does not prove fineness or origin.

If the market is secure only when every customer opens the package, weighs the item, and tests its fineness themselves, inadequate customer education is not the problem.

The prevention architecture is still incomplete.

Removing sealed packaging may be necessary to contain a violation, but it should not be presented as the end point. We do not abandon invoices after one is forged; we try to connect the document more securely to the actual transaction. If a stamp is forged, we do not discard the very concept of a stamp. Packaging is no different.

The issue is not whether plastic is present or absent.

The issue is what the package proves and who is responsible for that proof.

Anti-Counterfeiting Packaging: From an Attractive Shell to Part of a System

Genuinely secure packaging must be more than a simple physical barrier. Opening or tampering should be detectable to an appropriate degree. If it carries an identifier, that identifier should refer to the specific product, rather than merely a factory name or product type. Wholesalers and retailers should be able to check its condition on receipt. If a particular batch later becomes suspicious, the system should not lose its memory altogether.

This does not necessarily mean using a particular technology.

QR may or may not be part of the answer. The same applies to holograms. Digital identifiers, security printing, tamper-evident features, or combinations of methods are all tools. Their selection should begin with the type of risk, not the appeal of the technology.

ISO 22383:2020, a voluntary standard from the international committee ISO/TC 292, takes precisely this approach. It concerns selecting and evaluating solutions that examine the authenticity and integrity of material goods and, where necessary, their components and associated data throughout the life cycle. It emphasizes that authentication elements should be selected after assessing counterfeiting risk.[8]

ISO 22378:2022, from the same committee, addresses the issue at system level. Its areas include identifier management and verification, the relationship between unique identifiers and authentication elements, checks on participants, and access logging. The standard itself also makes clear that it does not prescribe a particular technical solution.[9]

Neither standard is Iranian law or a ready-made prescription for Parsian products.

Their importance to us lies in the questions they ask.

Instead of asking, “What label should we attach to make it look secure?” we should ask, “What relationship must be preserved so that, if the label is copied, the system itself is not deceived?”

That is the distance between an anti-counterfeiting tool and an anti-counterfeiting architecture.

Where Does a Better Architecture for Parsian Begin?

Suppose the aim is to let the final buyer have reasonable confidence without specialist equipment, while no one promises that anything is “impossible to counterfeit.”

The work must begin before packaging.

Manufacturers must be responsible for the weight and fineness of products leaving their facilities. If an identifier is assigned to a piece, it should not be something that can be repeated on hundreds of others at no cost. The connection between the plaque and its packaging should be designed so that substituting the contents or reusing the package is, at least, neither easy nor traceless.

Next comes wholesale trade. A wholesaler should not first discover that a batch is defective when a customer complains. Incoming checks, supplier identity, purchase documents, and the ability to reconstruct the product's route become especially important at this link, because one illegitimate entry can spread to dozens of shop windows.

The retailer is the next checkpoint. They are not expected to be a laboratory, but they are a market professional and can reasonably be expected to have more resources and knowledge than the customer. If a product enters the shop with an unclear identity, code, or supply route, passing the entire risk to the buyer is indefensible.

The invoice must also connect product and transaction. The Tehran union's notice emphasizes essential invoice information.[14] In a better system, if a specific item has an identifier or traceable specifications, the memory of the transaction should not be completely detached from that item's identity.

Ultimately, the customer should be able to see the essential information through one simple, reasonable check, rather than conduct a technical test.

This is the proper division of labor: demanding checks take place where tools, expertise, and responsibility exist; simple checks remain in consumers' hands.

Coins: A Piece of Gold May Not Be an Official Coin

Coins hold a particular place in Iranian buyers' minds. Familiar shapes, established market names, and a long trading history lead many people to assume that coins are more straightforward than manufactured articles or melted gold.

That familiarity itself can become a weakness.

A coin's identity depends on more than its gold content. A privately produced piece can genuinely be gold without being an official Central Bank coin. If it is presented in a way that confuses the two identities, the issue goes beyond weight and fineness.

In Mordad 1405 (Solar Hijri), the head of Qom's criminal investigation police announced the identification of a group that, according to police, packaged and press-sealed counterfeit coins using reputable, well-known market names. The police report also described the network's members as operating in several cities.[10]

We see again what we saw with Parsian: the power of a name and its packaging is part of the asset the counterfeiter steals.

The fraudster does not sell only metal. Sometimes they put someone else's credibility inside the package too.

Here, too, sealed packaging alone cannot establish the issuing authority, fineness, weight, and identity of the coin. A package can be part of a chain of trust, but it is not the whole chain.

Online Sales: Gold Leaves the Shop Window and Becomes a Number

Online gold sales take an issue that has always existed in this market to another level: the distance between claim and object.

In a shop, the customer at least sees a product on the counter. On a platform, what they initially buy may be no more than a number in a user account.

0.2 grams, one gram, five grams.

Fineness still matters, but another question comes first: exactly how much real, deliverable property is this number connected to?

In Bahman 1403 (Solar Hijri), the head of FARAJA's Economic Security Police warned of the risk of “selling gold without backing” on online gold platforms. He stated that, following police intervention and a judicial order, more than one and a half tonnes of gold had been collected from companies and placed in designated banks. The same official spoke of more than 10 million buyers of melted gold on these platforms.[11] These figures are a law-enforcement official's statements at that time, not an audit of the entire market or a definitive estimate of violations.

The concern itself is clear: in a digital setting, counterfeiting or deception may no longer look like a copper coin. What needs proving is the backing behind a record.

In Mehr 1404 (Solar Hijri), the Council of Ministers approved the “Executive Directive on Online Buying and Selling of Gold and Silver.” The regulation defines roles such as platforms and vaults, sets a framework for gold delivered and available for trading, provides for physical delivery, and establishes a multi-agency working group for coordination and supervision.[12]

These rules do not automatically prevent every fraud. No regulation has that power.

Their logic nevertheless matters here: a digital transaction cannot exist only on a screen. Somewhere outside it, there must be an asset, a responsible party, and the possibility of delivery.

A gold-colored button is not yet a vault.

What Exactly Does Counterfeiting Look Like in the Gold Market?

Having seen these examples, we can draw a clearer map. This classification does more than organize our thinking: each category needs a different defense.

1. Counterfeiting the Product Itself

In the simplest form, something is offered as gold, a coin, or a legitimate plaque when it has no such identity. Imitations made from base metal belong in this category.

2. Falsifying Fineness or Weight

A product may contain some gold but have a lower fineness than claimed, or its actual weight may not match the card, invoice, or seller's account. What is falsified here is not necessarily “the presence of gold,” but the amount of value attributed to it.

3. Falsifying Attribution

A test result, assay mark, code, or document may originally be genuine but belong to another piece. This form uses a valid component to create invalid trust.

4. Falsifying Identity and Origin

A manufacturer's name, brand, minting authority, or seller is attached to goods that did not come from that source. The cases of using established market names for coins and Parsian products fall within this category.[5][10]

5. Counterfeiting Security Tools

Cards, sealed packaging, holograms, standards codes, QR codes, and verification pages can themselves become targets. This category is especially dangerous because the counterfeiter copies the very thing intended to expose counterfeiting.

6. Forging Transaction Documents

The invoice, product specifications, weight, fineness, or a party's identity may not be correctly reflected in the document. Here, even if the product is available for inspection, the memory of the transaction has been manipulated.

7. Falsifying Data and Backing

In a digital setting, what is distorted may be an ownership record, inventory quantity, or the relationship between obligations and actual assets. The physical object may not be visible at all when the transaction occurs.

This classification has an important benefit: it shows why no single tool can answer the market's needs.

A scale does not detect a counterfeit brand. An assay device does not resolve a forged invoice. A hologram does not measure online inventory. If the identifier itself can easily be copied, a QR code may merely provide a faster route to the wrong answer.

And Not All of These Are “Counterfeiting”

Alongside counterfeiting, the gold market faces other violations and frauds, and we should deliberately preserve the boundaries.

Charging a high price is not in itself counterfeiting. A loss caused by falling prices is not counterfeiting. Incorrect or obscure workmanship charges, presenting used gold as new, failing to deliver goods, or phishing may be deception, trade violations, or fraud, but the term “counterfeiting” does not always apply.

On the other hand, these same practices can combine with counterfeiting.

A fake gold shop website may both impersonate a business and facilitate fraud. An underweight plaque in an imitation card can involve weight misrepresentation and counterfeit packaging at the same time. A fabricated invoice can also bridge an illegitimate product and an apparently lawful claim.

Precise terminology does not make the danger smaller.

It helps us understand what we need to confront.

How Many People Does One Counterfeit Hurt?

When discussing the damage, we naturally think first of the buyer: they paid and received an illegitimate product. But in the gold market, harm spreads along the chain.

The Buyer and the Family

For buyers, the loss is more than the difference in price between original and imitation.

Expert assessment, testing, travel, and complaints may add costs. A product that was supposed to turn quickly into cash may suddenly become entangled in proof and dispute. All this may happen precisely when the family needs its capital.

This “time of discovery” matters especially in gold.

Someone who has counted a piece as financial security for five years has not suffered only on the day of sale. They have lived for five years with an inaccurate picture of their assets.

That harm does not appear in the simple calculation of “purchase price minus the imitation's value.”

The Retailer: Both a Checkpoint and a Potential Victim

The seller who handed the item to the customer is not always the counterfeiter. They may have received illegitimate stock through wholesale channels and sold it in good faith.

To the customer, however, they are the face of the market.

The buyer chose a professional business precisely because they expected greater knowledge, experience, and tools. The seller's good faith therefore does not remove all professional responsibility.

If the counterfeit is discovered, the retailer may have to take it back, compensate the loss, pursue the supplier, and defend their reputation. One transaction can call years of good standing into question.

For retailers, prevention is not an added expense. It protects their reputational capital.

The Wholesaler: Where One Mistake Multiplies

Wholesale trade changes the scale of the problem.

One illegitimate incoming item can reach several businesses. When the problem emerges, there is more than one invoice and one customer: someone must establish how many goods were distributed, where they went, and which businesses still hold them in stock.

The Tehran case showed this link's importance.[1]

A wholesaler is more than an intermediary speeding up circulation. Greater distribution power also gives their errors greater power to spread.

The wider the distribution radius, the heavier the responsibility to know the origin and record the route.

The Manufacturer and Reputable Brand: The Counterfeiter Spends Someone Else's Credibility

When a manufacturer's name appears on a counterfeit, the manufacturer may have had no role in making it. Yet the market does not necessarily recognize that distinction immediately.

Customers become suspicious of genuine packaging too. Sellers must examine more closely. The manufacturer must explain, change the packaging, strengthen the identifier, and pay to educate the market.

The counterfeiter has used credibility they did not build.

This is one reason reputable manufacturers should welcome an anti-counterfeiting system. Product security does more than pay for defending customers: it defends the manufacturer's own name.

The Laboratory and Assay Center: A Number's Credibility Can Be a Victim Too

If an assay mark or test result is transferred to another piece, the laboratory's credibility also suffers.

The test itself may have been performed perfectly. But a market repeatedly exposed to misuse of results will place less trust in the mechanism itself.

The laboratory therefore has a stake not only in “technical accuracy,” but also in protecting the attribution of its results.

A valid number loses some of its power when it cannot show what it belonged to.

The Union and the Entire Trade: One Violation Casts a Shadow over Everyone

People rarely remember news with all the details of a case. After several reports of counterfeiting, a general statement takes shape: “There are more counterfeit goods in the gold market.”

In that sentence, the honest and the fraudulent stand side by side.

In this respect, a union is more than its members' administrative representative. The entire trade's credibility is a shared asset, and counterfeiting attacks it.

The Tehran union's Parsian warning and the Mashhad union's response show that a trade association can react to a practical market pattern sooner than many agencies.[5][7] But a union's preventive role must extend beyond warnings. If a packaging or distribution method has repeatedly been abused, the issue is more than asking members to “be more careful”: the method itself needs review.

The Regulator and Society: The Public Pays for Counterfeiting Too

Inspection, sampling, testing, police investigations, administrative enforcement, and judicial proceedings are not free.

When a product is detected after widespread distribution, tracing its route and dealing with its consequences costs much more than stopping it at an early link.

In this sense, the counterfeiter takes money from more than the buyer. They transfer part of their costs to manufacturers, honest sellers, regulators, and ultimately society.

Counterfeiting does not eliminate the cost of security.

It sends the bill to others.

That is why it can be considered a hidden tax on trust.

Responsibility for Prevention: What Exactly Is Each Link's Share?

“Everyone is responsible” sounds appealing, but without clear roles it has little effect.

The Legislator: Clarify Responsibility Rather Than Choose the Technology

The legislator's job is not to choose a hologram or an assaying device.

Its main task is to define responsibilities, recording requirements, the limits of authorizations, complaint routes, and enforcement so that, when a dispute arises, institutions cannot simply pass the customer to the next institution.

The Trade Guilds System Act allows buyers, consumers, and inspectors to submit complaints or reports of trade violations to the relevant union, and Article 72 sets out the framework for subsequent handling.[13]

Having this route matters. But good law does more than build corridors for after the incident. As far as possible, it should create incentives and obligations for transaction information, responsibility, and identity to be clear before an incident.

Compensation is necessary, but it does not replace prevention.

Enforcement and Supervisory Bodies: Close the Case, Not the Route Forward

The Iran National Standards Organization, the Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade, Ta’zirat enforcement authorities, police, the Central Bank, and other relevant bodies each see a different part of the market.

The problem begins when every case ends within the institution that discovered it.

If standards inspectors find Parsian products with below-standard fineness, that is more than a figure for an annual report.[4] Manufacturers and the trade need to understand the weakness. If police discover a network forging market markings, arresting the individuals is not the whole issue: the market needs to know which signal of trust has been abused.[1]

Detection that changes nothing in the market's design may simply leave the same route open for the next offender.

Supervision is not just about counting cases. It is also about learning from them.

The Union: The Institution Closest to Actual Market Behavior

A union has an advantage many other institutions lack: it hears the market sooner.

Sellers may encounter examples of a pattern of misconduct before it becomes a major national case. This closeness to the market makes the union's role important.

A union can issue warnings, train members, receive complaints, and, where necessary, influence trade rules. But the Mashhad experience shows that trade decisions also need regular evaluation.[7]

If packaging was opened to address short weight, the next question should be why more secure packaging had not been designed. If cards were forged, their credibility needs a verifiable basis. If fraudsters source products from several cities, one union's experience should not stop at that city's boundary.

Prevention within a trade needs a memory.

The Manufacturer: Authenticity Must Not Become Ownerless Beyond the Workshop Door

The manufacturer is the first place where claims about a product's weight, fineness, identity, and name take shape.

If these claims lack a defensible record from the outset, we cannot expect miracles from wholesalers, sellers, or buyers.

A manufacturer placing an identifier on a product must take responsibility for managing it. Anyone packaging a product must understand that packaging is more than a marketing tool. If it creates a feeling of security, that feeling becomes a promise about the product.

Product security does not begin at the end of the production line. It is part of product design itself.

The Laboratory: Preserve the Relationship as Well as Produce the Number

A laboratory's first duty is to provide an accurate result. But in a market where test results may be used for subsequent transactions, the result's attribution matters too.

The chain of sampling, recording, assay marking, and history must be clear enough that using a result for a different item is neither easy nor traceless.

No system is perfect, and the aim is not to promise invincibility.

But the easier it is to separate the “number” from “the piece that was tested,” the less value the result has for prevention.

The Wholesaler: Greater Distribution Power Means Greater Responsibility

If one customer buys a bad plaque, one family is harmed.

If a wholesaler brings hundreds of items from an unclear source into the market, the danger takes a different form.

Wholesalers should therefore be among the most important control gates. Knowing the supplier, transaction documents, manufacturer identity, and how to trace incoming goods matters especially at this link.

This link can make a major difference when a problem is detected too. If the wholesaler knows who supplied a batch and who bought it, the market's response can be targeted. Without any trail, each shop window must wait separately for the problem to surface.

The Retailer: The Last Professional Barrier Before the Public

Retailers occupy an important position in this book.

They are neither legislators, laboratories, nor police. But they are the last professionals in the chain before the final buyer.

Customers are entitled to assume that someone whose profession is gold has taken greater care in sourcing and accepting goods than they themselves could. This is not an absolute guarantee: no seller can detect every counterfeit by sight. But “we cannot know everything” is different from “I have no responsibility.”

Buying through known channels, checking documents, issuing accurate invoices, stopping suspicious items, and reporting new patterns are part of the retailer's professional responsibility.

A retailer should not be the chain's mailbox.

The Online Platform: Keep Digital Trust Connected to Physical Assets

In online sales, some of the traditional shop's role has moved into the system.

A platform must be able to record transactions, clarify its obligations, and maintain the connection between customers' assets and actual inventory. The 1404 (Solar Hijri) directive defines roles such as vault storage, delivery, and supervision for this field.[12]

Technology's advantage is that it can record more data.

Its disadvantage is the same: if the data are wrong or the backing insufficient, the same error can multiply much faster and on a far greater scale.

A physical shop window has limited capacity.

An app can speak to thousands of people within minutes.

The Buyer: Responsible, but Not Responsible for Everything

After all these links, we reach the buyer.

Buyers have responsibilities too. They should choose a seller who can be traced, understand the kind of product they are buying, take invoices seriously, and retain documents. They should pause if a price or story sounds unusually attractive. Where simple, reliable verification is available, they should use it.

But their share of responsibility must fit their position.

The buyer is not responsible for compensating for the manufacturer's weaknesses or performing the laboratory's technical controls. They are not expected to detect a professionally forged code by sight or know which printing house produced the packaging.

When all responsibility is ultimately placed on them through “people should be careful,” the easiest link to blame has been chosen.

Good prevention does as much of the hard work as possible before the product reaches the buyer.

What Do Large Numbers of Discoveries Tell Us?

The Tehran, Parsian, Ardabil, and Qom cases, along with standards inspection results, offer an important benefit for this discussion: they prevent gold counterfeiting risk from appearing to be merely the author's theoretical concern.[1][4][5][6][10]

Yet these same reports require careful reading.

The Tehran case's 30 complainants do not tell us what percentage of melted gold in the market is counterfeit. 13 nonconforming samples out of 44 in a standards inspection program do not establish the rate across the entire Parsian market.[4] Nor do the 800 items in Ardabil reveal the true size of the country's counterfeit-plaque distribution network.[6]

These are detection data, not a census of counterfeiting.

More discoveries may reflect more crime, better supervision, or both. Fewer discoveries do not necessarily mean a healthy market either. Reporting may have declined, fraudsters may have changed methods, or inspections may have decreased.

This limitation must not become an excuse for inaction.

In risk management, we do not always wait until the precise incidence is known. If the target's value is high, detection is difficult for the recipient, failure has serious consequences, and real attacks have recurred, prevention makes sense even before the statistics are complete.

The gold market has exactly these characteristics.

What Does Good Prevention Look Like?

Taking this discussion together, security in the gold market does not emerge from a hologram or a circular.

It is built from relationships.

The product must be attributable to its origin. Weight and fineness must be checked professionally. A test result must retain its connection to the sample as far as possible. Wholesale trade needs sufficient memory of the product's route. Retailers must know what they received. Invoices must record the transaction's true story. Packaging and identifiers must enable examination rather than merely reassurance. Online, too, the number on the screen must remain connected to a real asset and obligation.

When a suspicious item is found, the process should not end with seizing that piece alone.

We must ask where it came from, how many similar items were distributed, which link encountered it, and why it was not stopped. If a code was forged, can similar codes be found? If a manufacturer's brand has been counterfeited, is the market informed quickly? If a batch has a problem, can its route be traced back?

Prevention means every discovery adds something to the market's memory.

Otherwise, each case repeats the same lesson with a new victim.

The Day of Sale Should Not Be the Day the Truth Is Discovered

Let us return to the plaque at the beginning of this section.

It has sat in the safe for years. Whenever gold prices rose, its owner recalculated its value mentally. They may even have relied on that asset when making future plans.

Then the day of need arrives.

If only now it becomes clear that the weight, fineness, identity, or packaging was problematic, “You should have been more careful when buying” is far too small an answer for the problem.

How many links had an opportunity before the buyer?

The manufacturer. The laboratory. The wholesaler. The retailer. The union. The regulator.

Each according to its role.

The gold market deserves particular attention in counterfeiting prevention because it is supposed to store value. Society cannot ask people to trust gold with their future while leaving proof of each item's authenticity to those same people's personal skills.

Trust needs a responsible owner at production, a trail in testing, continuity through wholesale, a defensible basis in the shop window, and a connection to real assets in the digital world.

People buy gold to reduce some of tomorrow's worries.

They should not have to buy a small laboratory alongside it simply to trust that gold.