Friday is MetalPorn. Last porn of 2016 is best porn of 2016!

Weiss

So post your new purchases, your favorite purchases, your favorite pictures of 2016.

Newps:

And some of my favorite shots and purchases in 2016:

asheland

Epic metals there!

1630Boston

Downtown1974

Great PMs fellas!
This week I picked up some ASEs...nothing special worth posting.

Here are a couple of recent pics from 2016 that I still have in my photo library.

ricko

@Weiss....that is a nice pile of Mexican gold.... Cheers, RickO

johnny9434

thats a cool looking bisbee mining co. silver ummm, round.

ricko

Yep... that Bisbee button is cool.... I have been there.... should look for one of those as a memento. Cheers, RickO

piecesofme

Owning 4/10 of something ever made.

OnlyGoldIsMoney

My last purchase of 2016, now in transit from the UK.

John Langland/John Robertson Newcastle 1793.

Weiss

Only gold, that is the bomb!

OnlyGoldIsMoney

Thanks Weis, your previous purchases got me interested in tankards. Presently I am working on adding a lidded example.

Weiss

At least one major dealer in the UK (possibly the one yours came from, they do lots of Newcastle) now has videos in Chinese. I think interest from China and the strong dollar is draining nice pieces much faster than they sold in the recent past.

Nothing like having a beer in 200 year old sterling mug!

cmanbb

My last purchase of 2016

ricko

OK Weiss...now I am going to look for a sterling mug....just to have a beer in one that is 200 years old ... well, maybe... if I find one I really like....Cheers, RickO

Weiss

They're addictive. And their relationship with coins and precious metals is so intertwined that I'm really astounded they're not collected by more of us.

Frankly, they are precious metals and they're about as close to coins as you can get. Historic, valuable, marketable, treasure. Skillfully crafted, regulated for purity, marked with a date, bearing the designer's initials. There is a very deep American history to brewing beer. Most of the founding fathers did it or had it done for them. Pubs were the center of business and trade and politics in early American history. Just imagine the pistareens and half-crowns passing between barmaid and patriot (or loyalist), the printer whose can was pewter, the merchant whose tankard was sterling, both bemoaning the tax laws or the redcoats quartered on the outskirts of town...

PerryHall

What is the typical cost of one of these mugs compared to their bullion value? I'm guessing their antique value greatly exceeds their bullion value. I'd be afraid to actually use one since I'd probably drop it and put a big dent in it thus destroying much of the mug's antique premium.

asheland

I love seeing all this Georgian silver on here!

asheland

I just got a large stuffing spoon by William Bateman, London, 1815.
I'll post a picture tonight (if I remember)

asheland

Here's a crappy pic for now:

Meltdown

For all you folks not born with a silver spoon... I saved these from the melt bucket at my local bullion shop a few weeks back.

asheland

@PerryHall said:
What is the typical cost of one of these mugs compared to their bullion value? I'm guessing their antique value greatly exceeds their bullion value. I'd be afraid to actually use one since I'd probably drop it and put a big dent in it thus destroying much of the mug's antique premium.

If you shop around, occasionally they can be found close to melt. However as they get earlier and you find better quality or a rare maker or region, they can get pricey really fast!

Weiss

@PerryHall said:
What is the typical cost of one of these mugs compared to their bullion value? I'm guessing their antique value greatly exceeds their bullion value. I'd be afraid to actually use one since I'd probably drop it and put a big dent in it thus destroying much of the mug's antique premium.

For these pieces, which all predate the American Revolution, the cost is significantly higher than their silver value. But maybe not as much as you might think. The new one, the tankard on the right, was about $80 an ounce if my math is correct. With silver at $16 an ounce that's clearly high. But with silver at $48 an ounce in the last 5 years, it's not so bad.
Consider also that a "rare" 4 oz old pour Engelhard just sold on eBay for $2800 in October. That's literally a cast lump of silver made in the last, what, 40 years? And it sold for $700 an ounce! I appreciate the odd size Engelhard. But no way would I say it's worth more than a 28 ounce, 240-year old, hand-made silver tankard.

And if you compare these mugs to rare silver coins, which they are closer to, then their per-pound weight is an absolute bargain. You don't start reaching rare coin parity until you get into well-known American silversmiths of the same period, and even those could be considered bargains by comparison.

OnlyGoldIsMoney

Weiss, I love the look of those three Georgian tankards.

Below is the lidded example I noted in my earlier post that should arrive by mid month.

20 ounces of silver and a like amount of ale is my idea of weightlifting.

Weiss

That's really nice. You gotta post pictures when it arrives!

hchcoin

Why do they have lids?

PerryHall

@hchcoin said:
Why do they have lids?

I'm guessing to keep flies out of their beer. They didn't have screened doors or windows back then.

ricko

That is a nice tankard...the style I prefer - with or without lid.... Cheers, RickO

1630Boston

Yes, the lid gets in the way sometimes......but is sometimes useful to keep the flies out of the beverage

ricko

Use the method the Mexicans use... rub a lime around the rim...... of course, the tourists think the lime is to go in the beer (silly tourists) and even brought the habit back the U.S.. Cheers, RickO

hchcoin

@ricko said:
Use the method the Mexicans use... rub a lime around the rim...... of course, the tourists think the lime is to go in the beer (silly tourists) and even brought the habit back the U.S.. Cheers, RickO

You learn something new every day on the forum.

Weiss

I did a quick google and hygiene seems to be the main reason. The plague and the desire to keep flies, fleas, etc. away. Though I suspect it was also aesthetics. The same reason the handles started to swoop and have a fancy terminus, the sides had straps or engraving. Your stein or tankard is just a little bit nicer, fancier, heavier, and more expensive with a fancy lid, with an operable hinge, a handsome dome or even a pineapple finial on top.

I believe a pound is 4 crowns (20 shillings to a pound, 5 shillings to a crown) A 1750s-era crown was 30 grams of sterling. So a 25-ounce sterling tankard would have the silver equivalent of about six pounds (£) worth of silver alone. Figure maybe 10% for the manufacture (though that's just a wild guess). I think it's safe to say that a nice lidded tankard would be valued somewhere around £7, possibly more.

Annual wages for eighteenth-century women could range from the £2 to between £6 and £8 for a housemaid, and up to £15 per annum for a skilled housekeeper. By contrast a footman could expect £8 per year, and a coachman anywhere between £12 and £26. Because they had to provide their own food, lodging and clothing, independent artisans needed to earn substantially more than this. £15 to £20 per year was a low wage, and a figure closer to £40 was needed to keep a family. The middling sort required much more still and could not expect to live comfortably for under £100 per year, while the boundary between the "middling sort" and the simply rich was in the region of £500. _\

https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Coinage.jsp

So your average nice quality sterling tankard was the equivalent of a year's income for an average London lower class worker. To put that into perspective, the minimum wage today is around $10 an hour. That's about $20,000 a year.