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FRIDAY! Time for some mÉtÄL PöRñ!

WeissWeiss Posts: 9,941 ✭✭✭✭✭
edited December 21, 2019 9:25AM in Precious Metals

I posted a few weeks back about Heritage's Hong Kong signature auction which had among its listed items quite a few interesting and antique Asian bullion pieces--specifically the collection of world money researcher and author Charles J. Opitz.

I threw bids at a few of the pieces that I thought were the most interesting way back at the start of the auction, hoping I might be able to score some cool stuff without much of a premium. Not surprisingly, my high bids fell one after the other as the auction progressed and prices for many pieces smashed through their high estimates.

One bar that I'd watched but hadn't bid on was an ingot from the reign of the last king of Vietnam at the turn of the 19th century. Used in trade (some say the opium trade) along the Chinese / Vietnam border, these bars weighed from as little as 3.8 grams (called a "tien") to much, much larger bars measured in units called "lạng". A lạng weighs 37.8 grams or a bit more than a troy ounce each. Some of these larger lạng bars weigh as much as 100 lạng--more than 100 troy ounces! In his book, Opitz indicates that bars weighing 20 lạng or more are rare.

The bar I was watching was a 24 lạng, so it's both unusually heavy and quite rare. Pretty aged patina and a few cool stamps indicating the bar was pure silver and also naming the foundry in which it was cast.

Most of the bars in this auction are much, much smaller--but that's hard to tell from the images. You have to read the descriptions. They all look the same size in the images without anything for scale. Heritage had its weight tucked away a little bit into the description. At 919+ grams, it's nearly 30 troy ounces. When bids for the smaller bars started eclipsing my high bids, and then their high-end estimates, it freed up some money for me to play with. As the day of the auction neared, I threw a low-ball bid at this bar. To my surprise, the low ball bid actually won.

Once I'd realized I won the bar, I searched online and found a copy of Opitz's out of print book in which the bar was featured. Both arrived earlier this week:

From Heritage:
Nguyen Dynasty 24 Lang Bar ND (19th Century) VF (Residue), Opitz-pg. 33 (this piece illustrated), cf. Mitch-4540 (this weight unlisted). 135x35mm. 919.2gm. The top stamp reads: "Wen Yin" (pure silver) and the bottom stamp reads: "Yuan Ji" (foundry name). A heavy silver bar used in trade along the border between China and Vietnam. The face displays remnants of a "921" (perhaps an inventory number), and the reverse displays a small inventory number from Mr. Opitz's collection.
From the Charles J. Opitz Collection

We are like children who look at print and see a serpent in the last letter but one, and a sword in the last.
--Severian the Lame

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