Our Mission Statement
We endeavor to share knowledge about 19th US century ingots with the vintage bar collecting community and to raise awareness on the rich history, and what is possible to collect.
The field of mixed metal and 19th century ingots has been completely muddled by the likes of John J. Ford Jr. The production of fraudulent and fantasy pieces masquerading as real which began in the 1950’s had a lot do with the problem. Further to that, a lot of articles were written by people which contained inaccurate information and made incorrect assumptions and conclusions. We aim to clear up a lot of misconceptions about 19th century ingots in a way where it is much easier to understand and collect.
Our End Goal for Clients
By building this website, we not only have been able to grow in our knowledge of 19th century ingots but also to put that information together in a way that is easily to digest, disseminate, and understand. We hope that by providing useful information to the public, we will also continue to share and receive knowledge from the rest of the community, including learning about new and unique pieces we were not previously aware of!
The occasional discovery of a new ingot is quite a thrill!
We hope to help demystify and simplify the world of 19th century and rare vintage ingots.
Our Values
Our values are simple: build long lasting relationships with other like-minded and passionate individuals who love ingots as much as we do. We aim to have repeat, long-lasting relationships through honesty, fairness, and transparency. We believe that fairness and honest is one of the keys to success.
Our History
This website was founded in early 2024 after a considerable amount of time and effort went into researching old ingots and repeating some of the same processes over and over again. While constantly searching for more information it became clear to us that a public resource that combined all the information we were uncovering into one place would be very helpful to others. What started as an idea to build for personal collecting by building a census, quickly turned into the desire to put that information out there in a more public form. Hence, rareingot.com was born!
We went from collecting bullion, to collecting more and rare coins, to collecting pioneer gold which in many ways is the pinnacle of numismatics for us. Once we got to this point we realized how ingots tie so closely and naturally with the pioneer gold coins and their origins because in many ways they shared the same purpose, and they even (often) shared the same origins and makers!
Collecting should be fun, enjoyable, and informational. Through our journey in collecting we found it difficult to locate a lot of information and it was always a constant struggle to put pieces together to better understand the landscape surrounding rare ingots, primarily from the 19th century.
Why Do We Exist?
Quite simply: We are extremely passionate about 19th century ingots. We love the history, the stories, the mystique, the connection to money, and the intrinsic value in gold and silver all rolled into one. Collecting ingots is far more interesting where practically every single one is drastically different from the next, rather than chasing mint-marks where all the coins are virtually the same.
This site is dedicated to helping the casual collector and the seasoned Americana metals mavin in having a handy resource when it comes to older bars.
How Do We Make Money?
This website doesn’t make any money in its own right but we are bullish on the prospect of 19th century ingots increasing in value over time substantially. As such we aim to make money by locating and collecting more interesting ingots (buying) and occasionally by helping to place an ingot in a private collecting (selling).
What Products and Services Do We Provide?
- We occasionally may sell an ingot to help fund our interests.
- We help to broker high value and rare ingots in collections through private placement.
- We help to assess authenticity and appraisal on rare ingots.
- We document and research new discoveries.
Our Team
The team and the founder are one and the same at this time. For those who have been in the industry long enough, there will be no mystery behind the owner of this site since the ingots presented are readily identifiable.
Contact Information
If you’d like to reach out to us, you may use the contact form on the home page or email or call directly as follows:
Phone: +1 (623) 243-1003
Email: info@rareingot.com
Community Involvement
In addition to providing this website as a useful reference library and resource, we also actively participate in online vintage bar groups through discussion and group moderation. The best place to find communities with like-minded individuals is on Facebook within the collector groups, one of which is simply known as ‘Vintage Bars’.
Summary
Although we may feature the occasional 20th century ingots, that is not our main focus. Certainly there are many ingots from the 1900’s that deserve honorable mention, particularly those made by various Assay offices of the US such as Denver, San Francisco, New York, and others. Furthermore, just as history didn’t cease at the turn of the century, so too many ingots were still being formed. However, we largely aim to focus our attention on the best of the best – the bars that are truly several notches above the rest and are extremely rare, thus highly desirable.
We are not a modern vintage repository – for that, there are other online resources that may be better suited to the task. We classify most of modern vintage from 1960’s to 1980’s.