Rare 1976 Homestake Mining 4.02 oz silver bar

mbogoman

This bar just came in the mail today. It is a very rare Homestake Mining bar from the first batch of silver bars that Homestake produced in the 70s. It's the first one of this type that I have ever seen for sale - they just don't come up. It has the Homestake logo that is typically found on gold bars but was used for a very few silver bars in 1976 and 1977. According to the All-Engelhard website, less than 100 of these bars were made, and likely most have been melted.

Cheers!

Kliao

Neat! I like how the bar tells you the purity of the bar to 5 digits.

johnny9434

Cool bar I like it

ricko

Nice find... I imagine for bar collectors, that is a major find. Cheers, RickO

asheland

Very cool find!

mbogoman

@ricko said:
Nice find... I imagine for bar collectors, that is a major find. Cheers, RickO

It's the first one I have ever seen for sale and I've been looking quite a few years. That doesn't mean there haven't been any offered, but if there were, they likely didn't last long. The listing for this one was 20 minutes old when I stumbled upon it and hit the BIN button...

cmanbb

Interesting bar. Do you have any reverse pics?

mbogoman

Reverse:

cmanbb

@mbogoman said:
Reverse:

PM sent

Brian4571

I know this is an old post but what are these worth?

mbogoman

We'll find out soon. There is one on Ebay listed at $10K. I don't think it will go for that, maybe not even half that, but who knows? There are so few comps around to work with...

Brian4571

I have been watching that 4 ounce homestake bar since it was listed at 10K. It finally went this morning to make an offer and so I made him an offer and he took it. Can’t wait for it to arrive now.

mbogoman

I was watching it, too, for obvious reasons. I think you paid a fair price for it (I looked up the winning offer price on another website) . He was really reaching there at the beginning, and lowering it in $1K chunks every couple weeks wasn't helping. He finally got it down into a more realistic range, at least for making offers that were in the ballpark. That's only the second one I have seen other than the one on All Engelhard. You got a rare bar.

And by the way, your bar has the same diagnostics on the HMC stamp that indicate it is genuine...