An interesting first hand account from today's MIDAS of what is really behind the vault doors at the Bank of Nova Scotia...

Was invited for a private tour of the BNS vault

Hi Bill,
Waited for 2 months for a tour of the Bank of Nova Scotia vault. Just came back and I was amazed at what I saw. Given the amount of paper certificates out there I expected to see rooms filled with silver.

Silver:
They only have 60x 1000 oz bars as their working supply.
They have zero 100 oz.
They have zero 10 oz.
They have zero silver maples, silver eagles, zero 1 oz rounds.
They have 1x 5 Oz silver bar.
They have 10 million Oz in custody for Sprott and Butterfield.
I asked where is the silver that is backing the scotiabank certificates? The vault manager said New York I guess.
I asked have you ever had inventory this low. They said, been here since 1985, never seen anything like this, we used to have shelves full of small oz silver.

He said waiting for 3 months for 100 oz, 5 oz and 1 oz but cant get any supply.
They have allocated silver and gold as well in large safety deposit shelves but wasn’t able to count that.
Used to be under impression that gold and silver certificates are allocated because they have an exact quantity of metal to the decimal point. Now I know otherwise the metal is NOT there, though they claim it is in NY.

Gold
They have 210x 400 Oz bars
They have 2800x 400 Oz bars in custody for I shares
They seem to have ~4000 maples, ~500 eagles coins, 10x1 kg bars, 10x 1 kg gold in small nugget form for jewellers
I asked where is the gold that is backing the certificates. The vault manager said, the BNS vault in NYC is 5x larger than this one so it is likely housed there.

All the best
Lenny Organ