"I cannot tell you what it is all worth," said guide Inna Goncharova. "These are the state reserves and it is up to the president to tell you that -- if he wants to do so."
The unmarked building, surrounded by sturdy metal railings and guarded day and night, houses Russia's State Committee for Precious Metals and Precious Stones, where bureaucrats draw up plans for export and production and collect gold and silver offered for sale at home.
The long-secret organization recently opened its doors a crack to a handful of journalists, allowing access to a tiny museum of ingots, gems, icons and jewels.
Workers responsible for sorting and restoring the treasures kept behind heavy steel doors talked cautiously to reporters from Russia and a few other countries. But officials kept the vaults of gold and diamonds tightly locked.
"Soon we hope to allow access to the reserves," committee chairman Yevgeny Bychkov told a news conference after the tour.
Gold has been the shining exception to the generally dismal picture of Russian industrial output. Officials expect gold production to be little changed at around 150 tons this year.
Elsewhere output has been falling sharply -- industrial production dropped to 25.8 percent in the first six months of this year.
Russia has state and government reserves of about 320 tons of gold, down from 2,049 tons in 1953, before the Soviet Union started selling it to pay its bills.
Russia is also a big producer of diamonds and platinum, both of which bring in valuable export revenue.
But production figures and the size of the platinum and diamond reserves are closely guarded secrets -- a legacy of the reticence of Soviet days and an effort to avoid disrupting sensitive world markets.
The committee's Moscow headquarters is divided into two sections, an administrative block and a secure building where gems are sorted, gold weighed and silver assessed to see if it should be saved, sold or melted down for scrap.
A single, armed security man watches the entrance to the secure half of the building where electronic gates limit access to each floor.
Workers leave gold rings at home or in battered strong boxes outside the lifts, insurance against the temptation to slip away with a particularly attractive ring.
For as well as holding much of Russia's reserves of gold, diamonds and precious metals, the committee is obliged by law to buy gold and silver people no longer want or can afford to keep.
The metal, sold through branch offices across the length and breadth of the world's biggest country, is priced by weight.
Women workers sort spoons, chains, rings and scrap into good and bad, sending old gold teeth straight to the melting pot but keeping antiques to be offered to museums.
Asked where the metal they handled so casually could be bought, one worker reacted with shock.
"Selling gold is not our job," she replied.
Gold sales are still tightly controlled in Russia, although the government is slowly easing regulations.
It has authorized a handful of banks to trade gold, and special gold-backed bonds issued last year can be swapped for 10 kilograms of the metal on maturity.
This could be a problem too. "One little problem is that the paper is backed by 10 kilograms of gold, while the standard bar weighs 12 kilograms," said Pavel Khoroshev of Rossiisky Kredit Bank, one of the most active players in the market for gold-backed bonds.
"But the ministry seems to have enough 1 kilogram bars to redeem the paper by almost 100 percent. Soon banks will start working with real gold."
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