Historically, one popular method was to lower
the precious metals content in minted coinage.
If someone offers to sell you bullion for less than the spot value of
the precious metal content, it's either fake or stolen.
Not exact matches
Regardless of whether it is implemented via an emperor surreptitiously reducing the
precious -
metal content of the coinage or by the banking system (the central bank and the commercial banks) creating new currency deposits out of nothing, monetary inflation is a method of forcibly transferring wealth from the rest of the economy to the first users of the new or debased money.
Investigators are pursuing several lines of attack to shrink the platinum
content: using it more efficiently, replacing some or all of it with palladium (which performs similarly and is somewhat less expensive), replacing either of those
precious metals with inexpensive
metals, such as nickel or copper, and foregoing
metals altogether.
Separate
metals recovery (including
precious and semiprecious
metals): The mobile parts are ground up and useful
metal content extracted.