The authorities are now looking for anything that might have been part of the explosive devices - bits of metal or sharp objects that they might be able to trace back to its owner or owners.
The longer-term secular bull trend for gold remains bullish, and there remains plenty of fodder on the horizon to help trigger another explosive up move in the yellow metal in the days and weeks ahead.
Although that is two to three times the cost of a metal detector, it is less than the price of the fancy explosive-sniffing equipment that is the main rival technology being developed for detecting metal-free mines.
Ter Horst said that security measures in place in Amsterdam were metal detectors and X-ray machines, and admitted they could not have picked up the explosive material that AbdulMullatab was allegedly carrying.