Vintage NEWP ~ Draper Mint ~ with a question…
asheland
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So I got this yesterday, I have seen pictures of these before, but I’ve never seen one in person. I had to pay a small premium to get it, so I wanted to do a little research before paying extra, I think it was like six dollars over spot or something like that… $245 out the door
Anyway AllEngelhard has a nice page telling all about Draper mint. But my question is, is this piece made to be consumed? Like a piece of industrial Silver?
It appears to be cut from sheet metal. It’s pretty thick, I think it’s exactly a quarter of an inch, and you can tell this thing was not made to be pretty. The edges are even kind of sharp…
Certainly, this wasn’t made as an investment bar, it even has the odd weight…?
Were these made to be melted down by jewelers and so forth? Does anybody know anything about this brand or does anyone have a similar example?
I’ve seen the Swiss of America rounds, those are really cool, I hope to find one of those one of these days…
It gave a nice reading of .9999 silver on the new PMV, reading all the way through the bar… That gave me a lot of confidence that this was legit…
Here is a video showing the edges, there’s no doubt this is original, and has not been messed with. Of course the weight was confirmed to be correct as well…
https://youtube.com/shorts/c-L_CZ7IOZs?si=jUDAEkjWdEW0cusd
If you guys have any of these, please post them here!
Comments
As allEngelhard suggested.
It's a commercial bar for consumption.
I kind of skimmed that whole page, I’ll have to go back and read it again…
I appreciate your post!
👍
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You got a pretty good deal on that bar since the premium asked is often higher than what you paid.
These bars were not generally made to be consumed - they were made for sales to silver bullion accumulators.
Draper Mint would purchase slabs of silver from Handy & Harman (usually 1/4-inch thick), shear-cut them to various widths, weigh them, and stamp the markings and weight. In addition to the "SWISS of Utah" marking, they also produced some with "Swiss of America" "RMM" (Rocky Mountain Mint), and "KINGSMEN SILVER"
If somebody wanted silver for consumption (such as large-scale silver plating, for example), they would just buy slabs directly from Handy & Harman. There would usually be no need to pay more for a bunch of smaller pieces.
Note that Handy & Harman slabs typically have their triangle logo stamped on them (the stamp location varies). Sometimes, a Draper Mint sheared bar will happen to capture the Handy & Harman logo on the front or back. Any such bars with the Handy & Harman logo are worth more.
Here is a Swiss of Utah bar with the Handy & Harman triangle on the back:
This one has all the markings on the front (which is unusual):
Here is another type of Handy & Harman triangle logo, on a bar that I added markings to:
And here is one more logo type for Handy & Harman, on a full slab that I added markings to:
@dcarr that is awesome!
Thank you for posting those examples.
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