What is the difference between bullion and an ingot?
Bullion is traditionally a metallic bar, typically precious metal such as silver or gold that trades close to its base melt value. Essentially the item carries little to no numismatic premium and the value contained is a function of how much the actual metal is worth.
An Ingot can be bullion, but can also be much more than that – it may carry a significant numismatic or collectible premium based on its age, rarity, surviving population, condition, and desirability. Ingots are traditionally manufactured through a process of melting and pouring into a mold, whereas bullion can take any shape and can be machined/pressed.
How can you tell if an ingot is real?
The process of certifying or ascertaining the validity of a given bar or ingot can range from the simple to the complex. There are many ways one can tell if an ingot is real, but sometimes it’s not always cut and dry. Some of those methods are listed below:
Magnet test – does the base metal even act like a precious metal? If a magnet is attracted to it, then it isn’t a precious metal.
Scratch test with Acid – you can take a fine layer of the ingot and test it with an acid test kit to determine the metallic composition.
XRF – an X-Ray can be a quick and dirty way to approximate the underlying chemical composition and therefore the metallic mixture of a bar, particularly a poured bar. It does have some limitations as it doesn’t penetrate all the way.
Gravity test – metals have a known gravity and when tested properly this can be a very accurate way of determining a bar’s metallic content by comparing with known figures.
Visual test – an expert that has seen many bars can often tell rather quickly if an ingot is genuine or not. This can range from the obvious fakes, to much more complicated fabrications. Other more sophisticated methods might even include punch-linking to known good examples and provenance review.
Occasionally you might come across an ingot that has had a test cut made or been drilled. This has been done so that the tester can determine what is deep inside the bar to ensure it isn’t filled with tungsten which has a similar density. Unfortunately for ingots, this can often destroy a good portion of the collector premium but this is not always the case, particularly for extremely rare bars.
Where Have Western Assay Ingots Been Since They Were Made?
Some were in collectors’ hands and were sold, publicly or privately, from one to another. Some were kept as keepsakes by western banking families. Some were buried in the ground or under an old structure. Some must have been saved as souvenirs or curiosities. The biggest group was at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean!
Where Are Western Assay Ingots Located Now?
The largest number of ingots known is in the treasure found in the wreck of the S.S. Central America. However, there are only five different firm’s names on all the ingots found in the ship and many of those bars are pretty big and heavy. Most of the other, smaller ingots known are in private collections. Others are owned by private, state, and federal museums. Ingots show up on the auction market every SO often but they are very rare. Some others are sold privately by dealers or collectors who have specialized in western Americana.
Who Collects Western Assay Ingots?
Collectors sometimes don’t go far enough back in history to see the importance, significance, and extreme interconnectedness between coins and bars. They share the same family tree, many times with the same Assayers who made coins and ingots around the same time.
Such well known collectors as John Work Garrett, Louis Eliasberg, Henry H. Clifford, a nd Josiah K. Lilly all had ingots in their collections! So did famous dealers B. Max Mehl and Wayte Raymond. More recently John J. Ford also had a very large collection that was auctioned off by Stacks Bowers in 2007. Today, there are a handful collectors who specialize in ingots along with a growing number of others who are just beginning to get into the collecting field. Most new collectors start their journey with “modern vintage” dating back primarily to the 1960’s to 1980’s. Some of them grow tired of modern vintage, or are looking to upgrade their collections, or start to look into more rare and esoteric items. The thrill of the hunt beckons!
Western ASSAY ingots put the collector in direct touch with the men and women who journeyed west to make their fortunes and in doing so made this country (USA) great. The gold or silver ingot in a collector’s hand may have been some prospector’s dream of a new home or a grubstake in a new business.
Where Can I Learn More About Western Assay Ingots?
There are several sources we can recommend. A-new book devoted to the business and biographical histories of California assayers will be published jointly by Stack’s and Bowers and Merena later in 1999. Authored by Dan Owens, it will be the starting place for all future research on the subject. Don Kagin’s book Private Gold offers some information about the better known assayers like Moffat, Kohler, Humbert, and others. Auction catalogues can offer a valuable resource for western assay ingots. Some of them include:
- Bowers November 11, 1974 sale of the Gibson Collection
- Ruddy’s March 18, 1982 sale of the Henry Clifford Collection
- Stack’s June 11, 1997 sale of the Schoonmaker Collection
- Stack’s October 16, 2007 sale of the John J. Ford., Jr. Collection
Majority of the text above is directly cited from Stacks 3/1/1990, Blake and Agrell Territorial Gold Pieces by Eric P. Newman. It was contained in an informational brochure published by Stack’s in conjunction with the 1999 Groves Forum Lecture on the subject of Western Assay Ingots.
See: https://archive.org/details/epnbox37-rf90-blakeargewllterr/page/n57/mode/2up
For further research over the years, we’ve used major auction archives including Heritage, Holabird-Kagin, Stack’s Bowers, Worthpoint (Ebay solds and others), iCollector, and even the Newman Numismatic Portal. We’ve painstakingly combed through countless smaller auction company catalogs and spent hours perusing digital archives.
The Newman Numismatic Portal at Washington University in St. Louis provides access to thousands of auction records and historical numismatic literature. (See https://nnp.wustl.edu/).
Got Ingots?
Are you aware of a rare ingot that we haven’t yet featured or would you like to place a special request on adding a specific Assayer to the list? Don’t hesitate to reach out! This website is a work in progress and we are constantly adding more information on various Assayers, Makers, Regions, and specific Ingots.
Better yet, if you own an ingot that hasn’t been featured anywhere publicly but would like to send us information about it, we’d love to hear from you!
Do You Have a Want List?
If there are specific ingots you might be looking for, there’s a chance we might be able to help. If you give us an idea of what you’re in search of we’ll do our best to put your name in our wish-list database in order to help match it up with potential bars that fit your appetite. It’s always so tough to let the good bars go!