Good Afternoon To The Community, I am new so forgive me if i do something wrong. Here is my situation, I obtained a 1977 Coca Cola Art Bart for Denver Colorado. It is still in it's original plastic. Along with the bar came a post card in excellent condition and it has the Coke logo and on the right side the Bottlers name and location. It is to be filled out with the serial number and sent to Coke in Atlanta. The question is: Home many of the Denver Bars were minted and did they actually come with a post card to register them with? Your help would be deeply appreciated. In advance, Thank you....John
We have a resident expert here who may be able to answer your question, SilverArt. He'll probably be around soon to respond.
JHLSTUFF, I want to start off by saying that congrats on your Coca-Cola Denver find. To answer your question, according to the 2nd edition of Tom Mock's book titled "Coca-Cola Bottler's 75th Anniversary Ingot and Round Guide Book 1975 to 1988", the mintage number for the 1977 Coca-Cola Denver silver art bar is 2,500. I do not think that all of the Denver Coca-Cola bars came with the post card but it might be a situation where there were some of them came with the postcard but most of them probably did not come with a postcard. I have never seen a Denver Coca-Cola bar with a postcard and this is a very interesting find indeed.
1970 Silver Art, Thank You for your response. Your information was helpful and legitimized what a few others have said. I found out through further research, that there is another book beside Tom Mock's, which is more detailed, that put the bar in the highest rarity classification and to add further, the registration card only exist for a few of the early 1977 mintings. No one seemed to be using them and because the cards were personalized for the bottler with each bar, they cut the printing expenses because in some cases it was costing almost for the cards what the bars were costing.
That is interesting. I did not know that about the personalized cards. I learned something new today and I thank you for posting this peace of information.
Copy of bar & registration Card Silver Art, Here are the copies of the registration card and Coke's 75th Anniversary 1 ounce ingot. I am communicating with Coke now. The first call was let us look into further, then the next day, the Call was, please send pics, then a few days later, the card was printed for just a short time and they don't even have one in their museum and then the call came: Are you willing to sell?
Thank you for sharing. This is the first time that I have seen a Coca-Cola bar with a registration card. Apparently the Coca-Cola museum does not have it and they usually have just about everything that is related to Coca-Cola. This is very interesting indeed.
JHLFSTUFF, I am going to say that your card is a marketing method toget your name and address as a potential collector of the ingots you would have had at that time, so they could send you more information about the other ingots you didn't own or would be added to the program. As you know now, ingots continued to be made for a few more years after 77. The World Wide Mint has long been out of business (since 1982), and records are just not accessible but still may exist in a warehouse somewhere based on what I have found out. But, no one is will to help and the bottlers are not much help these days either since they consolidated into one company. Hope I was some help; Denver was a very nice design and you have a nice shiny looking ingot!
Diet Coke, I understand what you are saying, however, if you look at the return address on the card, and it was confirmed to me, that is a Coke Post Office Box and confirmed by Coke. The cards were no produced for many of the ingots, because of cost. Now as far as the World Mint. I have just recently met someone who purchased all the ingots from the owner of the World Mint just recently. He contacted the individual and the individual informed him, the card was from Coke. And, the Ingots were not sold, they where given to each bottler for them to hand out to their most important customers. This is what I am waiting for Coke to confirm in their findings. There has been many phone conversations going on and Coke does realize what is at stake with not only the card but the ingot because of the limited amount made and its condition.
I understand your thoughts based on what is printed onthe card, but I have "Order Forms" from the same address. Here is what happened back in the day when these were being produced. The bottlers authorized their production and sold them, the bottlers also used other sources to sell them such as local banks. They also partnered with some of the folks behind the scenes that started the Ingot Program (Gary Fillers) through a company called “The Cola Collector” which later renamed to “The Coin Wholesaler”. Then they went out of business (not sure ofthe date they folded). That is when the “Official Coca-Cola Bottling Company Commemorative Ingot Program” all of a sudden came about (I don’t know the history of this company). I never received anything in the mail that they were registering the ingots, so that is why I believe it is a marketing effort cooked up by the Denver Bottler to help share and obtain more collectorinformation so that they could mail addition “Official Order Forms” as new ingots were produced. Maybe someone knows more, but I have spoken with allot of people at World Wide Mint, Gary Fillers and others at Coca-Cola Bottlers over the years and this is the best information I can obtain.
JHLSTUFF, It was later in the program like around 1980 that ingots were produced only for the bottler and handed to employees (silver ones that is) only and major vendors/friends of bottler. These have limited quantities much less than Denver had issued (500 or less). They are the ones that command the high prices. Also you will find proof versions, some with out serial numbers, types, gold plated ingots, bronze ingots, sterling silver, etc. I will agree with you much is not known about these ingots and will be lost forever if someone doesn't get the records (if they have not been destoryed already).
Thanks for the complement and I try my best to play a Coca-Cola silver art bar expert on the Internet but I want to state for the record here on Cointalk that DietCoke1117 is the real expert here on this. DietCoke1117 is much more knowledgeable and much more experienced on Coca-Cola silver art bars than I am. DietCoke1117 is the "go-to" person when it comes to Coca-Cola silver art bars in my very honest opinion. I just want to state that for the record here on Cointalk.
Diet Coke, First, let me Thank You for the information, it is of interest. I am only repeating what I am being told by people in the Archive division of Coke. I know, that years ago, when we used slate instead of paper....lol. I was the VP of Marketing for an International Co. We produced Corgi Metal Toys of our equipment. We did produce X amount per machinery based on the size of our distributor as well as how much business they did with us. After the program ended, we sold off the rest of the pieces, if my mind serves me correct, about 10,000 of them to a private company who was going to market them to toy collectors and stores. If any of our distrbutors sold to them, we were not aware of it. This is what may have occurred with Coke. I am not sure, researching it with the people at Coke right now. The biggest problem I think most of us are going to have is......the length of time since this occurred. 1977 sounds like a short period ago, however, I can tell you that the individuals that handle our promotion are all no deceased. We are talking 35 years ago. What I have been able to get out of Coke is, working with the marketing company that did this program for them, there were registration forms produced for some of the earlier bottler's involved. However ass cost started to mount, the personalized card was aborted because, back then, the cost of producing the cards in small quantities was exceeding the cost of the ingot. This I believe. Printing was a high expense at the time. The other issue that I am pursuing, and I think it is sorta like the President Dollars that came out a few years ago: they only did so many Bottlers a year, what I asked in writing from coke and trying to conform from the owner of the World Wide Mint was, did they put the serial number on each bottlers ingots and start over or did they consecutively number all the ingots once they were produced. My belief is the second option, because of cost in setting up the stamping dies. I looked at your form, very interesting, this looks like what they may have replaced the original program. This gave the company who over saw the program the opportunity to get rid of extra ingots. However, II noticed on your form, they never asked for a serial number to register. It looks more like a form to get rid of left overs to whom ever. I have been told by Coke, just waiting for everything in writing, that there were registration cards that went out with the first few sets. And, Denver was in the first group. I am also trying to find out what was the order of bottlers when the ingots were made. i collect many different things, however, not ingots. I have the same problem with another issue regarding the appearance of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show that was actually done in Florida and telecasted to New York. This again is, to many people are dead to confirm certain things. I guess we are all getting older.
Thanks for the information and I look forward to the research information you get back. I hope you will share it with us on this thread or a new one. There is a lot of information not known and each year I or collectors I know, come across one or two more things we didn't know.
DietCoke, I have everything right now at Coke's archive division. As you are aware, trying to talk to anyone in Coke is like trying to talk to someone in heaven. I have no idea how legite any of the info provided to me so far by Coke, through conversations, are. However ,i have beeen informed by them, that they are researching further and will get back to me in writing. When this happens, I will be more then glad to share with the community.
