Simmons Refining Company

One of my all time favorites, Simmons is an iconic hallmark and well known among silver bar enthusiasts. The company operated out of Chicago, Illinois in the 60’s and 70’s. The made many varieties of bars from small 5 and 10 gram bars to 1 oz pressed commercial bars and a slew of beautiful poured bars from 5-14.5 oz class for the most part, but did some larger bars in their later years.

Definitely my favorite and most rare Simmons piece. This 1/2 LB Troy variety is next to impossible to come by. Estimated mintage <100.
Awesome stamp and patina.
You can see the age on this bar. Just a fantastic example.
Nice old 10 oz example. Estimated mintage <1,000
Love this mold an shape of this variety.
2 different varieties of the 14.5 oz class Simmons ingots. Top two are different with smaller hallmark and bottom also has Silver stamp in top right with serial on bottom left. Very rare variation that you never see. Top 2 have estimated mintage of <1500. The bottom ingot is unknown, and mintage likely in my opinion to be <100.
Not he top two use a sand mold. Bottom ingot is done with an entirely different mold and size is different. It’s more squared that the top two that have a more rounded look.
Two more beautiful examples of a 14.5 and 10 oz early pair of Simmons bars from Brian R’s collection.

The hallmark changed later with Simmons to be a more industrial looking S. They began using Simmons Refco in their name. Some believe this is short for Simmons Refining Company. According to Allengelhard and I’m quoting them hear, “While one might assume  the “REFCO” designation would represent “Refining Company”, the acronym was in reality derived from Raymond Earl Friedman & Co. in New York, a financial services company specializing in commodities and futures contracts.” I have not seen provenance for either of these designations, but would love to know for sure.

These are very well done. I’m a big fan of the later look on these ingots.
Reverse, more of a squared mold. Nice texture to these bars. Good lookers.
Landscape variety second gen Simmons with the newer S hallmark. These have estimated mintage of <500. Awesome bars.
Love the molds on all Simmons bars. They really put a lot of care into the appearance of these ingots.

Author: Vintage Poured Bars

New blogger with a passion for old poured silver bars. I'm a Bay Area native and self employed. Active buyer of vintage silver poured bars and occasional seller.

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