Vintage Poured Bars

Aurum

This one has been a mystery to me and I continue to search for information on these special pieces. One of my collector friends and regular contributor to this site, Prashant K. has been acquiring fantastic pieces of late and shared two beautiful examples from Aurum. I decided not to wait and posting these in hopes that someone out there knows something about Aurum and can share some history with us. Thanks again to Prashant for sharing these!

There have been a number of highly collectible vintage pieces that use different variations of the “Scales” hallmark. To name a few, Dugan and Helterbrand, United States Smelting & Refining, and San Diego Refining.

This is an absolute stunner. I really love vintage pieces with the scales. The mold and character are fantastic.

Absolutely killer reverse with character and toning.

Big boy!

Again, if anyone has any information, please reach out to me through the blog. Hope you enjoy these pics.

Spokane Bullion Company

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.

Unique example with some nice toning on the left side forming. This bar has a cast finish and different from many of the other varieties that I have seen

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.

Very rare loaf style Spokane Bullion piece. Hard to even estimate mintage on this. The 10 oz class loaf styles I’ve seen have a smaller “oz” stamp. This larger “OZ” makes this variety interesting and scarce.

Reverse. This is a chunk of silver goodness!

Incredible 20 oz class pieces. Really perfect weight stamp here. Estimated <25 on this piece!

U.S. Assay Office, San Francisco or New York

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.

This bar came in two types, poured and an extruded type. This is the more sought after poured variety. Very tough bar to find. It’s toned up beautifully.

Some nice leopard spotting going on here. Love this!

Without a doubt, my favorite hundo in the stack.

Vintage Silver Corvette

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.

Here is the marketing piece for the 25th Anniversary. Very cool!

Letter from Balfour, the maker, stating silver obtained from B.R. MacKay.

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.

1 Oz Class Silver Smalls

Finally getting through the majority of the “Smalls.” It’s been a work in progress for quite some time. Hope you enjoy.

Scarce 1 oz variety from Hallmark Precious Metals Inc. They were in business from 1974-2004 and operated out of Mercer Island, Washington, as well as a few other locations in Washington.

The obverse of the mysterious “J” ingots. These are neat pieces. I have a 5 oz piece featured in an earlier blog post.

Top is 1st gen Silvermat (very tough bar to find). Bottom is second gen Silvermat (found more often).

Love the mold of the top first gen Silvermat.

A few really cool varieties of Tombstone AZ pieces from Brian R’s collection.

Reverse pic of the two Tombstone pieces.

Two varieties of 1 oz class BRC (Bahamian Refining Company) pieces. Love this Eagle design on the left.

Right non Eagle variety has great patina and different weight and purity design at bottom of the bar.

Very cool trapezoid style with excellent patina and Eagle stamp on obverse.

Rare 1 oz Johnson Matthey Canada, Sandon B.C. ingot.

JMC stamp a bit faint, but such a hard bar to come by. Happy to have it.

This a a neat piece, KML with a Simmons like hallmark. Not much known on these, but they have been commanding very nice premiums when they come up.

Neat Virginia City, NV Comstock piece. These are more modern, but were done in very limited quantity.

1 oz class Alexander Westerfeld, Aztec Sun.

Very high premium 1 oz class Keiffer. Big fan of these.

Liberty Mint hallmark above. One of the more unusual hallmarks you will come across. Just a box with a line going through it. Not sure what it means.

More modern, but very scarce Prospector’s Gold & Gems first gen 1 oz pour.

Very unusual old pour that I picked up about 5 years ago. No idea on this one.

It’s from Arizona and has a GM stamp on the side.

Non hallmark, but very old in my opinion. It has a Midas Metals look to it, but the mold is very similar to the old Omega 1 oz pours.

Smaller Weight Vintage Ingots From Around the World

Over the last several years, I’ve tried to add unique vintage ingots from various parts of the World. Today I’m going to share a handful of 2+ oz to 100 gram size pieces from various countries. Enjoy.

This came as part of a 4 ingot set (all 100 gram) in 1969. The EI is Engelhard International (Refiner), the Crown is the Sheffield Assay Office hallmark, the seated Britannia represents purity, and the B indicates year (unknown).

100 gram Morris and Watson piece from Australia. Not sure of the year, but this is a well done ingot with great lines.

Exceptionally rare S.R. Mitchell (Australia) ingot. Estimated mintage <5 in 77 gram class. This particular ingot is 76.2 grams and 2.45 troy ounces. One of the rarest pieces in my collection. Stanley Robert Mitchell, the founder, became a gold assayer in 1911 (significance of date stamp on ingot) and started S.R. Mitchell & Co Pty in the 1920’s. This ingot is likely a 1970s era piece. The company was believed to have been in business until sometime in the 1980’s era.

This is a really neat 5 Tolas piece with great toning and detail. Made by M/S Manilal Chimanlal & Co. out of Bombay, India. This weighs 1.88 troy oz. These are generally found beat up. I was fortunate to find such a pristine example.

For other international ingots, check out my blog on Perth Mint and Harringtons, where you can see some other gems from Australia.

Notable 2 Oz Class Ingots

Today, I’m covering a handful of known vintage 2 oz class ingots. “Silver Smalls” is one of the fastest growing segments of the vintage silver collectibles market and has been hot for some time. I think these are a fantastic store of value.

2 oz Keller ingot. My understanding is that these were made for clients and employees for a Keller RealEstate firm years ago. More information would be welcome on these.

Oregon Gold and Silver 2 oz class. Very tough bar to find.

Phenomenal lines of the reverse of this 2 oz OGS.

Possibly made by OGS and likely so, this M/C is the same mold and stamps. I don’t know the refiner, unfortunately. Help welcome!

2 oz class Global Metal Refiners ingot. I’ll be sharing a 1 oz shortly in a separate blog entry.

One of my favorites is this 2.3 oz Doral (NY bar).

Side view with incredible toning and layers.

Reverse of the Doral ingot. Fantastic piece.

Not poured, but extremely rare 2 oz class SOA from Draper Mint. These are nearly impossible to find. My theory is they split a small number of 5 oz class extruded into these smaller varieties. Note the 2 in the weight is stamped over a 5. Love this bar.

This shows the detail and some toning better than the first pic. Better view of the 2 stamp over the 5 in this image.

Old P.C. poured ingot. Not sure of the refiner, but a cool old pour.

2 oz Class poured FJS and Volkswagen commemorative piece.

J & J Smelting and Refining (CA bar) made in same mold as Omega and NCM 2 oz. This is the only one I’ve seen in 2 oz class.

2 oz The Boatmen’s National Bank (courtesy of Brian R.). These are beautiful pieces.

Only 1,000 were made and given to first 1,000 customers for opening Bank Accounts from what I understand. See example of assay paper give below, but not for this ingot pictured.

Found this online through research, showing a 9/1/70 date of issue from The Boatmen’s National Bank of St. Louis for ingot No. 397. Very cool.

Spiral Metal Company, Inc.

I decided to dedicate a short piece today on Spiral Metal Company (out of New Jersey), as this particular hallmark eluded most of us until some recent provenance was discovered (thanks Mike B. if you are reading this). Looking at the hallmark, many guessed that this was PM, but it’s actually a style of cursive, not commonly used by any means. Take a look and you will see how this would be difficult to figure out.

Beautiful darkly toned ingot weighing 2.74 troy ounces.

Reverse pic. Really well done and care was given to this particular pour.

Provenance of the S an M. It’s a match! Thanks to Mike B. for sharing this publicly with fellow collectors.

Notable 1+ oz Hallmarks

I’ve said it before, but the genre of “Silver Smalls” collecting is and probably always will be my favorite area of focus. I believe for value and holding premiums, this is where you get the most bang for your buck and it’s no surprise that scarce vintage 1 oz and 1+ oz pieces carry the biggest per oz premiums. Enjoy these beauties.

Alkin 1.67 troy oz ingot. These are really neat pieces that rarely come up for sale.

Rare Vulcan Refinging 1.47 troy oz piece from El Paso, TX

Extremely scarce Balthrop & Co. ingot, 1.09 troy oz.

Really unique piece. Only one I’ve ever come across.

1.15 troy oz Alexander Westerfeld Aztec Sun with asbestos glove marks on the ingot. This is the reverse side.

The Irrawaddy Counting House at Rangoon

I started collecting silver ingots from the US and Canada primarily, but as I went down the rabbit hold of collecting vintage silver ingots, I began venturing outside my immediate market and started seeking out collectible pieces from other parts of the world. I’m fortunate to own a few Irrawaddy pieces, which were believed to have been produced from the 1950s to the 1970s. These are designated in Taels, which is common in many parts of Asia. For those not familiar with a this measurement, one tael equates to 1.21528 troy ounces. Rangoon is in the country of Myanmar (formerly known as Burma at the time these ingots were produced). They have a very nice shape and thickness an great in hand. There are several varieties of these with various purity differences ranging from .90 fine to .999 fine. I have seen these in 5 Tael and 10 Tael class. Here are a few from my collection.