Does anyone know ANYTHING about the 500.98 oz Johnson Matthey Silver Bar ? My friend has tasked me with this. I can only find things on the 100 oz. and 1000 oz. Any help would be greatly appreciated..
If the appearance is correct, one might explain the odd weight by the fact that JM does a lot of recycling and smelting. Perhaps doing someone's private smelting, they had to give what ever weight the bar ended with. With their own, since they own the silver product being used, they can "shave" the weight down to a common weight ( 500.0 gram) and their shavings just goes into their next company melt. My possibility comes because some local friends sent in silver pieces to be smeltered ( Not JM) into pure silver and the bar(s) they received were marked with odd weights.
Here is a pic to see the bar. Still hoping to get more information. Seems a few dealers are looking to give me below spot. I figured it may be worth a little more due to it not being a normal size......
These bigger bars are hard to move at a premuim. I would think a few percent back of spot to be a fair price. I think your going to be very hard pressed to get spot or better. I see nothing wrong with the markings of the bar.
was hoping maybe worth... When made and possibly for who... Is it possible to find out this from serial #?
Well It's hard to say from the markings the age. I'm thinking it's an older bar as the JM logo has changed from this one... I would guess it was made in the last 25 years or so. I'm not sure if you could research the SN. Value... well melt is $16,827.91. I recently sold a 950 oz bar for %98.5 of melt. I could have held off for %99 but the risk was too great with the current market. I expect you could net 94%-95% of spot relatively easily.
From what I know of the old pours is that the mold & crucible that does the pour are set to fill to the desired weight but since they are poured by hand many are over ( a few under) by grams up to an additional ounce. Many times I have come across old pour bars that have odd additonal grams. The addional weight was withing tolerance for them & was accounted for when sold so the additional labor to take off the weight was not needed.
I really doubt anyone would pay more than spot for a bar of that size. Premium and collectible value is only on smaller bars. Once you get past the 1 kilo size, there's basically no premiums on any kinds of bars since their intrinsic silver value is so large already.
