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.
Vintage Silver Bars 