Month: May 2020

Bunker Hill Company is the highest premium of this bunch. They were a notable refiner out of Idaho between early 60s and early 70s. This example is #80 which is stamped on the side outside edge of the bar. This variety has an estimated <500 examples made. Bunker Hill pieces came in 1 oz up to 100 oz size. More information can be found at allengelhard.com for history and varieties, estimated mintages, etc.

Bahamian Refining Company, interesting bread loaf style with serial/lot number stamped top center. Not much is known about them, other than they were an incorporated company in Arizona, operating in the early 1980s. I have a few interesting 1 oz pieces that I’ll post in a blog on “silver smalls.”

Buschmeyers 10 oz class. These are affiliated with the same company WGB (W.G. Buschmeyers). Very cool and highly collectible pieces. You can see my example is a 12 oz piece. They forgot to stamp the decimal. Should be 12.0. This was common with old pours. Many believe these omissions are errors, but they are not. These were hand stamped and there are many examples of slopping stampings from refiner to refiner.

Bitterroot Nugget Exchange is a rarely seen old poure out of Missoula, Montana. Montana had some great refiners, notably Chovanak, who many serious collectors covet. This BNE is a classic old pour style. I’ve come across less than 5 ever like this.

Lastly, and one of my favorite 5 oz from the “B” box is Bojuka Ryu, that was 70s era out of Marina, CA. In 1970, a small karate club was founded in Marina, CA. It grew fast and in 1974 changed its name to Bojuka Ryu. Bo stands for jujitsu, particularly Danzan Ryu Koden Kan jujitsu. Ka stands for karate arts. This one is #10 serial number. Iv’e come across one other. These are scarce and the type of pieces that make collecting ingots really fun.

Adding another fantastic example of a Bunker Hill ingot, shared by Brian R.

B.R. MacKay & Sons are highly collectible old pours that came in many sizes, typically 10 oz class and above. They have the distinguieshed 3 water droplets for a hallmark as seen in the below examples. They have an interesting history to say the least. They were a refiner out of Utah and refined silver from used x-ray slides and other film products. In 1983 the owner was indicted on manslaughter charges after an employee died on the job from cyanide poisoning. At that time there were many refiners operating without strict safety protocols. This incident brought change to the refining industry as it related to safety and compliance.

Here’s a few more examples to share courtesy of regular contributor Brian R. Thank you again for sharing these.

Brown Materials Co. out of Oklahoma is one of the “B” refiners that are highly collectible and particularly scarce. Pictured below are 3 varieties, a 1st generation 10 oz and second generation 10 and 5 oz. Notice the similarity of mold with Golden Analytical 10 oz? They are the same exact mold and weight/purity stamp. The Brown Materials 5 also shares a similar molds with the GA 5s. I will be sharing examples of all GAs when we get to the “G”box.

The 5 oz is very rare in the second gen. I don’t believe there to be a first generation 5 oz, however. The bar on the right is a first generation 10 oz and extremely rare with ultra high premium.

Here are a few beautiful examples of 10 and 5 oz class Brown Materials ingots shared by Brian R.

Update to this post, I was finally able to acquire a rare skinny 5 oz variety Brown Materials ingot. Only a handful of these are known to exist.