For those who remember, I wrote a letter asking about taking delivery from the COMEX. Well I would like to tell you about a very educational experience.

Recently, we took a delivery from the Comex. The process was a bit cumbersome but very enlightening. First, I would like to say that the process of dealing with the custodians was very professional. However, let me begin my story of amazement.

The silver and gold were to be prepared and packaged for shipment by the existing custodian. As I understand it, this was part of the delivery out fee. We will get back to the packaging later.

The metal was arranged for a pick up and delivery using a very well known armored carrier. Initially, everything was going as planned. After the metal was gathered from various custodians, it was on its way to Boise, Idaho. We were in contact with the armored carrier who laid out a time frame of when to expect arrival of the armored truck. We were told that shipment arrivals usually occur in the morning and with plenty of notice.

Well this is when the story gets interesting. Three days after the shipment leaves New York, I get a call at  4:50 pm from one of our vault managers. He mentioned if the armored carrier ever called with a delivery notice time. I told him the armored carrier was supposed to call us with an estimated time of arrival. Our vault manger paused and said, I have a big armored truck sitting outside. He mentioned to me later that the truck was fairly weighed down in the back with the headlights shooting up in the air. Anyone in the armored transportation business would say at this point we have a problem. An unscheduled delivery, 10 minutes before the vault is locked down, darkness setting in, and a truck with obvious big payload sounds like a setting for a Jessie James novel.

But wait it gets better.

The packaging which the Comex custodian charged for consisted of pallets of silver with metal bands over the bars. The gold bars were in a simple cardboard box. There was no shrink wrap over the pallets or secured container holding the gold bars. It seemed like a $10 glass bowl bought on the internet was better prepared for shipment than this extremely valuable cargo.

Somehow during the transportation, the bands on the pallets holding the silver bars broke and some of the bars were scattered in the armored truck. To make matters worse there was no invoice providing an itemized list of bars and their serial numbers. In fact on the invoice that I did sign off on, the delivery date was to be two days later.