Month: March 2021

Another great West Coast bar that has become highly sought after with strong premium growth over the last several years are ingots made by Spokane Bullion Company. They operated for a short time in the early 80s out of Spokane, WA (1980-1984). Their ingots came in sizes ranging from 5 oz to 50+ oz class. I just recently scored my first example, which is an earlier version of the bar with low estimated mintage. A great source for this particular bar is allengelhard.com where they have put together a nice variety of images from this old refiner.

I’ve a few incredible pieces to share from Prashant K’s collection below. Again, thank you to fellow collectors who are sharing pics with the community. It’s really great to see the different and highly scarce varieties of some of these old refiners.

I pulled out one of my favorite hundred oz vintage pieces today and decided to drop a quick blog post on this bar. Many of you have likely seen the 1 oz rounds from the US Assay Office San Francisco dated 1981, as well as the pressed 5 and 10 oz bar of the same. When I started collecting about 7-8 years back, this was the bar I wanted badly and took several years before I was able to acquire one.

First a brief bit of history behind this bar. Some of you may remember the Hunt brothers, who tried to corner the silver market in late 1979 early 1980. If you don’t know the story, here is a link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Thursday

Long story short, the Defense Logistics Agency was sitting on 165 million oz going back to stockpiles from the late 1960s. They dumped the silver onto the market in 1980 to drive down prices, thereby wiping out the Hunt Brothers. The silver in the bar pictured below came from this stockpile that was sent to the US Assay Office SF and NY to produce these bars.

I’m super excited to share this item that was shared with me this week by Paul W., who found the blog and sent the story with pictures to me. Although it’s not a poured bar, this is a piece of vintage silver obtained from B.R. MacKay & Sons out of Utah and made by Balfour Merchandising Company out of Texas. I have to say this is one of the more interesting pieces I’ve seen in quite awhile. Paul’s father was a Chevrolet dealer in the 70’s to early 80’s. The dealership was Don Allen Chevrolet in Miami. These silver corvettes were only offered to the top selling dealers in the US at the time and only 80 were made. Paul’s item is #50. It came with a notarized letter from Balfour along with a jewelers appraisal. It weighs 4 pounds and 99.9% sterling silver. Great piece of Americana. Enjoy the images below.

Hope you enjoyed this post. I welcome any of the readers of this blog/site to please feel free to share pieces from your collection. We are always looking to add and update new content that others can enjoy and learn from. Take care all.