Stewart’s Reduction Works Uniface Exhibition Silver Ingot
Stewart’s Reduction Works, Georgetown
A uniface ingot that reads: 4.7. OZ. SILVER / 834. FINE. COIN. $5.07 / STEWARTS. REDUCTION / WORKS. GEORGETOWN / COLORADO. An exhibition ingot for a mill product from the Stewart Mill near Georgetown. The Stewart Mill was built in the mid 1870s, and was located in the lower part of town. It had 20 stamps, a stirred vat leach plant, furnaces, and could treat 24 tons per day, according to Corbett in the Colorado Directory of Mines, 1879. Within a year, it was relatively inactive, according to Frank Fossett. No mention was made of the mill in later Reports of the State’s Resources. The mill may have processed some of the rich silver Pelican mine ores from nearby Silver Plume. This is an unusual flat ingot, made in a simple manner to show off the product (silver), without the need for a traditional thick silver ingot. The crude, hand-punched style of this ingot renders it easy to read, correlative with some other exhibition ingots, though this same crudeness is also present in some questionable ingots. The individual letter punched design is somewhat problematic, though would have been necessary if it was uniquely made as an exhibition ingot (example- Belcher, 1875).
From The Kagin Reference Collection of Frontier Ingots.
[08/2006] https://coins.ha.com/itm/ingots/stewart-s-reduction-works-georgetown-a-uniface-ingot-that-reads-47-oz-silver-834-fine-coin-507-stewarts-redu/a/414-2581.s ($4,887)