[Platapus]

How exactly would one inspect 3,400 tons of gold?

Gold bars that are kept in central banks usually weigh 12.5 kilograms or 27.5 pounds... 400 troy ounces to be precise.

3,400 tons, assuming short tons, of gold is 6,800,000 pounds or about 247,273 bars of gold. How long would it take to count that many bars?

Assuming that one could move, count, and restack 100 bars per hour, the counting would take 2,472 hours or 103 days..... working 24 hours per day. That's three months of nothing but 24/7 counting. Working just 8 hour days, it would take almost a year to count.

Since the bars would be stacked, one would would have to disassemble the piles to count the inner bars. If one is so distrustful as to not trust the central bank from stealing the gold, one would not assume that the inner bars are also gold and not simply painted lead.

That's a lot of moving of almost 7,000,000 pounds of stuff and then move it back when you are done counting.

I think it would be more efficient to just store the gold bars inside a vault that is sealed. As long as the seals are secure, so is your gold. I would also imagine the central reserve banks have insurance or some other type of security agreement.