I searched realcent for "goldback" and this was the only thread found, so sorry for the "necrobump"...
I was recently gifted a 1 Utah Goldback. It's an interesting item. Apparently they use some form of electrolysis to coat 24K gold onto a form (gold foil). They add some security measures and serial number and then sandwich the whole thing in a couple layers of polymer.
The note contains a single image/design that is visible with shadows/colors (ink) on the front side. The back side is not doctored up - it's just like the back side of a metal stamping.
The front of the note feels smooth to the touch. The back side lets you feel the design. I wonder if blind people could differentiate the notes/designs or not.
The note is pretty. It's a shiny golden ticket.
The note is very bendable and flexible. I can easily bend the top of the note to touch the bottom (forming a circle) and release it back to a flat state, but I'm hesitant to fold it in half flat like I would with a paper dollar because I'm afraid that doing so would crimp it.
The 1 Goldback note is purportedly 1/1000 troy ounce of gold. Roughly US$1.50 worth of gold (divide spot by 1000), but there is a decent premium on these notes ($2 per note from what I saw) because the manufacturing process is a bit more involved than minting coins.
I could see these notes working well as an exchangeable currency if legal tender laws, capital gains taxes, etc. weren't tilting the playing field. I would certainly be more comfortable dealing with notes like these than 1/10th toz AGEs (which are sooooo tiny and easy to lose) or bits of those Valcambi CombiBars.
The only real downside I see to the goldback is the inability of owners to verify the gold content of the note(s). With coins/rounds/bars, you can measure size and weight and run other tests to verify the gold content. These notes don't seem to be conducive to testing. Maybe they are though and I just don't realize it.
It's an innovative idea for producing small denomination gold suitable for commercial exchange. If the verification issue can be satisfied, I'd love to see Utah lead the way in monetary reform like Ron Paul's old competing currency bills to make them practical for every day use.
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On the side of the White Knights are communities like RealCent and BullionStacker who focus on trading the metals. I am semi-active on both sites.
If you don't mind, are there more? Do you belong to more than RealCent? ...
There were several around back in 2007/2008 or so. Most have faded away. In addition to the two you listed, there is also goldismoney2.com (seems to be a lot of right wing political talk), silverstackers.com (Australian site - I like it) and pmbug.com (which I own and is very small ... err exclusive... yeah, that's the ticket). Cointalk.com has a bullion investing forum room, but it's not the main focus of the site.