Month: August 2021

Academy has a rich history having started their business in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1990, primarily doing smelting and refining. They produced bars in the 80s ranging in size from 5, 10, 25, and 100 oz bars. They were eventually acquired in 2010 by Brush Engineered Materials (Ohio based), which in turn became Materion (name change in 2011). Materion was acquired by Scottsdale Mint of Arizona in 2012. The pours below were thought to be poured in the 80’s -90’s era based on pour style. Below are some different styles from my collection.

The Draper Mint was founded in 1960 out of Draper, Utah. The name is probably familiar to most, but even more familiar to most is Swiss of America, which was one of the Draper lines of bullion back in the day. They did the iconic 1 oz Swiss of America “rolo” chunky rounds, the thin extruded 5 and 10 oz class bars, the 5 oz “hockey puck” rounds, as well as a handful of other various bars and rounds. I’ll be updating this post in the future with more images, but today, wanted to showcase the 5 oz rounds, which I’m a big fan of.

These came in 3 different varieties, “The Minuteman” and or “The Patriot” is the most common, followed by “The Eagle,” and lastly “The Bill of Rights,” far and away the most rare. See pics below for comparison.