Blake Ingot - it COULD have served as currency at the time......
Lakesammman
Posts: 17,393 ✭✭✭✭✭
Acquired this ingot this week - although it appears to have been a presentation piece, ingots this small could have been spent in commerce. From the Owyhee region in southern Idaho, Indian territory at the time (I.T.). Acquired it with 2 other ingots and I'm pretty excited about all 3.
Edited to add one more side of the ingot.
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Comments
Lakesammman
Nice bar!
I agree with your statement
Blake was also in the Arizona Territory
Over 10 years ago I was doing research on Blake and other assayers when I came across this
newspaper statement from the
Weekly Arizona Miner: 6-22-1872
It took me a little while to find it again
It is referring to Pletz another AZT
assayer
From Mineral Park
Mr. Pletz , Assayer in Cerbat, is making our money: Plenty of silver bars, worth from $6 to $25, and stamped, “Wallapai District”
are in circulation here and money
is becoming more flush in consequence.
Thanks for that reference.
CA, AZ, NV and ID - wherever an assayer was needed, he met the need.
It looks awesome, nice pickup!
It's all about what the people want...
That's really cool. Love the old IRS stamp.
I don't know much about these but it looks interesting and like a great link to our past!
Very cool! Where do you find something like that?
Regulated at Kagin's was the source for it - miss him posting here........
In doing a little reading, there apparently were Hawaiian laborers working in the area and around 1820 were killed by the native people. That's how the Owyhee river and area got its name.
Very nice! Cool.
I really like that. Very cool piece.
Great transactions with oih82w8, JasonGaming, Moose1913.
That is one sexy bar
Dead Cat Waltz Exonumia
"Coin collecting for outcasts..."
Very cool. I really like odd historic pieces like that.
It's very hard to value those things. Every time I run across something like that, I worry about paying too much. Yet, when I pass on the purchase, I usually wish I had bought it later.
That is certainly a unique piece....I am not a PM bar collector, but that would get my attention, and possibly my money. Cheers, RickO
Impressive to say the least. Thanks for posting it.
An impressive acquisition. Love the impressed info on all 3 surfaces! Peace Roy
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That is a very nice silver artifact!
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Nice addition
Really cool!
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That is super cool. Just how scarce is it? I've never seen anything quite like it.
Click on this link to see my ebay listings.
Impressive that there is a bit of gold noted on the bar, 70 cents worth back in 1867.
Wow, I've never seen any US silver bar of this age! Is there any published material to learn more about these?
Meltdown
From my notes taken 10 years ago
There were at least 14 known FW Blake silver bars
Out of this total I think 3 are in the
Smithsonian
Each bar of course is unique
Serial number, value , weight, fineness, combinations, etc.
Most from Owyhee, I.T.
I do recall seeing a couple of Blake bars from Unionville Humboldt Co. N.T
Great bar.
But what is the IRS connection? Why the Internal Revenue stamp? Did they validate it? Was it made/assayed for them?
There was a tax law that ran from 1862-1872 - basically the forerunner of the IRS. Assayers that conformed to the law had to stamp the ingots to indicate, I imagine, that the appropriate tax had been payed.
It's somewhat useful in that it helps date undated ingots either before 1862 or after 1872.