Afternoon everyone….
I know many of you that stack silver and or gold or both, only care about price. Which is fine, but in your searches for the cheap silver you could come across some pieces that are worth a whole lot more than spot.
Many of you have an LCS (local coin shop) near you, lucky you and take advantage of that. Well when an LCS owned buys a lot of silver rounds and or bars, most do not go through the entire lot unless something catches their eye. Most will dump the entire lot in the junk bin.
In the past I have scored some very high dollar value bars and rounds from the junk bins of LCS’s and coin shows.
While knowing exactly what you are buying is impossible since there were so many small mints making rounds and bars in the 70’s & 80’s. Here is my suggestion to all of you that just buy the cheapest junk bin stuff.
If it looks old buy it. If it has any advertisement on it but it. If it was made by Johnson Matthey, Engelhard, Draper Mint, or A-Mark buy it. If you have any feeling that it is old just buy it. You only care about the silver weight, so what does it matter what is on the bar or round anyway.
You could have a bar or round worth 5-10X what you just paid for it. Yes that is absolutely possible.
I have found Engelhard Prospector rounds in junk bins at coin shows. I have also found advertisement and anniversary minted rounds of companies in junk bins.
Here is an example of a junk bin find that is worth over 10X what it was bought for.
This is a Johnson Matthey Mallory round from 1978. It was produced in Canada and was part of a two piece set. One ounce of gold and one ounce of silver in a hard plastic display case. There were only 5,000 of these sets produced.
My guess is that the guy that bought it took the gold out and sold it. Then not knowing what it even was threw the silver round into the junk bin.
This piece was purchased for $12.50, and is now worth in the area of $180-$200.
When I bought it I had no idea that it was a limited mintage like that nor were the resources available then to know what it even was. But I did know who Johnson Matthey Mallory were and it was something I had never seen before so I bought it.
There are tons of resources now available to find out about vintage bars and rounds. There are several publications that people have made on this.
Here is the round
