i bought some bullion today

It does have a high "rarity value" over spot silver according to the 4th edition of the Archie Kidd Silver Art Bar Guide Book. The guidebook mentions that this Winston ChurchHill silver art bar minted by Silver Creations has a rarity between $75 and $100 but those are not the most updated "rarity values" since I do not have the 5th edition silver art price guide.

With that said, most silver art bars will not sell at guide book price. There are exceptions to that rule. I think that silver art bars minted by GreatHouse and Green Country Mint, to name a couple of mint names, might sell for more than guide book price on ebay because they have very low mintages and there is a huge demand for them.

I also have to say that I have not seen a Silver Creations silver art bar sell on ebay because there are were not that many minted to begin with. 1,000 mintage is IMO a very low mintage and anything under 1000 mintage is very hard to find. I am not sure what that particular silver art bar will go for on ebay but my instinct tells me that it might go for multiples over spot silver but I am just guessing on that.

I am going to make a very conservative guess here and say that this particular silver art bar will probably sell between $30-$40 on ebay. This is for a winning bid. This is not BIN prices. I do not use BIN prices on ebay because they tend to price those too high to begin with.

Again, the $30-$40 winning bids on ebay for the Winston Churchill silver art bar is just a guess on my part because I have never seen any regular Silver Creations silver art bar regular auctions on ebay. It is certainly possible that they could sell for more than a $40 winning bid on ebay with the low mintage number. There are probably some Silver Creations minted silver art bars on bay but they are probably BIN prices and they are more than likely too high to begin with.

 

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SilverArt,

Thanks a lot for your research. I may have a chance to pick up one of these and that gives me an idea of its worth.

 

You are welcome Cloudsweeper. I am glad that I was able to find that in my silver art bar price guide. To put it in perspective, the Archie Kidd price guide called "An Indexed Guide Book of Silver Art Bars" is the "Red Book" for silver art bars. The $30-$40 winning bid on ebay for that Silver Creations "Winston Churchill" silver art bar was just a conservative guess on my part based on the mintage number. If you end up buying it for a low premium over spot (ex. $1-$4 over spot), then that is a excellent deal IMO.

BTW I looked at the other silver art bars that were minted by Silver Creations and I might have to add some of those on my silver art bar "wish list". Some of those Silver Creations mint bars look nice and I like a few of them themes.

 

I was actually able to buy 4 of them for $16.95 each in the original presentation cases. All have some toning and look like they were handled a bit, but they were priced right. I don't think most dealers consider silver bars as anything but bullion. Thanks for your help.

 

That is an excellent price that you bought them at. You are exactly right Cloudsweeper in that most local coin dealers just treat silver art bars as .999 generic silver and will price them accordingly. I suspect that the reason why that is the case because most local coin dealers do not know about the rarity values of certain '70's silver art bars. Most collectors know about the rarity values and will bid them up well accordingly on ebay but most of the ones that I want are too high of a premium and I do not want to pay that premium on ebay. That is why I prefer to buy most of my silver art bars locally at local coin dealers and at coin shows. You never know what rare '70's silver art bars will fall through the cracks and end up on a dealer's table for $1-$2 over spot. These are the same rare '70's silver art bars that will sell for multiples of spot silver on ebay. That is why I mentioned that if you ever decided that you wanted to sell them, then ebay is the best place to sell them at because these silver art bars that were minted by Silver Creations will get a fairly high premium over spot. If you decide that you want to sell them on ebay, then sell them individually instead of as a set because you will probably get more premium over spot per silver art bar. Even if I was wrong and they "only" went for between $25-$28 each on ebay, then you will have still ended up being ahead even after ebay/paypal fees. If you decide that you want to keep them, then that is a very good find and I will congratulate you on an excellent purchase for an excellent price.

 

Silver Art,

Thank you for your help. One of these days I'll have to get a copy of Archie Kidd's book, but the few copies I've seen are very high priced.

 

You are welcome.

Yeah. The 5th edition of the Archie Kidd book is very pricey and very hard to find. If a 5th edition book does show up on ebay, then it will usually go for a price (usually a BIN price) of between $150 to $250. Sometimes I have seen some go for more than $250.00 on ebay. I currently do not have a 5th edition Archie Kidd book. I just have the 4th edition Archie Kidd guidebook and I use that 4th edition mainly as a reference to identify and to study various '70's silver art bars. I paid $58 for a 4th edition Archie Kidd guidebook on ebay. I think that there might be another silver art bar price guide coming out in the future but I do not know when that will come out.