This came up when I visited my LCS today. It's a story that's about a year and a half old, but it was news to me, so I thought it was worth sharing. The guy at the shop said he didn't have any generic bars, just a few rounds. Then he said, "Well I do have one Provident 10 oz bar, but I can't sell it to you, because I'm not sure it's pure".
Excuse me? I wasn't sure I had heard him right. I inquired further and he said that for the past couple years some products made by Elemetal, OPM, NTR & Provident had come back as less than .999 pure. He said he only buys them at 90% prices, then sends them off to be melted down. He doesn't want to chance selling a bad bar to someone, and tanking his reputation. This way if it comes back as at least 90% he breaks even, minus refining cost. But if it comes back as anything higher, he's made some profit, and he's taken a potentially bad bar out of circulation.
This was the first I'd ever heard of this, so when I got home I did a little investigation. I didn't find much in the way of solid fact, but this page has a couple posts about the issue from June of last year. More recently they've also been involved in a scandal involving some illegal gold smuggling or something. But as far as impurity, information seems to be sparse.
The one concrete thing I did find was on the kitco site:
So there's definitely still something going on. Some of the posts I read said that this means they pay less than normal for bars from these companies, which backs up what my coin shop guy said. Does anyone else have any additional information about this? Should I be concerned? I only own one modern item from these companies, but I'll for sure think twice about buying them in the future. Or am I just being paranoid?