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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;superc, post: 1720771, member: 44079&quot;]Durn it every time I think I am done with the thread a new concept creeps into it.&nbsp;&nbsp; <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie3" alt=":(" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /></p><p>&nbsp;<p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: #000000"></span></p> <p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: #000000"><br /></span></p> <p style="text-align: left">&quot;Its a bullion currency that is not meant for circulation.&quot;</p> <p style="text-align: left"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left">No such thing.&nbsp; Even the US $10,000 bill was meant for a limited circulation&nbsp; as means of resolving a transaction and is therefore currency.&nbsp; ASEs however are only a little bit different than the bullion bars and ingots I used to haul back and forth from the (then Secret) West Point Mint Depositary vaults to the Manhattan Federal Reserve Bank in the Cold War days.&nbsp; They both had (have?) bald eagle stamps.&nbsp; Both say United States of America.&nbsp; One had very limited legal destinations (mint to mint), but the newer ASEs can be bought and held by anyone.&nbsp; That does not make it intended for use in transactions.&nbsp; Indeed in order to specifically prevent that they stamped the ASE Medallions &#039;one dollar.&#039;&nbsp; </p> <p style="text-align: left"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left">LOL.&nbsp; That wasn&#039;t clear enough for the Numismatic types.&nbsp; They should have stamped it &#039;not valid for use as currency if the rate of exchange is more than two cents.&#039;&nbsp; </p> <p style="text-align: left"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left">If it was intended to actually be a circulation coin used in transactions, it would have been marked &#039;Twenty Dollars&#039; and released in a different channel.</p> <p style="text-align: left"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left">There is one difference, and to me one difference only, between the Sunshine mining (or pick a back yard smelter) 1 troy ounce rounds and the ASE.&nbsp; I have yet to see a really good counterfeit ASE.&nbsp; I am not saying they aren&#039;t out there and that someone reading this won&#039;t take it as a challenge.&nbsp; I am just saying that all of the fakes I have seen don&#039;t stand an eyeball/tactile inspection.&nbsp; Poor polish, imperfect reed spacing, funky looking bird, etc.&nbsp; </p> <p style="text-align: left"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left">That brings us to the difference.&nbsp; Take a Sunshine (or other make) round out of the box or packaging.&nbsp; Do the same for an ASE.&nbsp; Go sell your Sunshine round to a silver shop.&nbsp; At least 85% of them will insist on the right to assay it first before offering you a price.&nbsp; They will also charge you for the assay and damage the item in the process of the assay.&nbsp; That is because their are fakes out there and not all rounds actually contain the purity of silver they are supposed to.&nbsp; </p> <p style="text-align: left"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left">&lt;There are fake PCGS (and other) slabs out there too.&nbsp; One problem with a slabbed coin.&nbsp; How do you verify it is real without cracking the slab?&nbsp; How do you know you aren&#039;t buying a piece of plated zinc inside the slab?&gt;&nbsp; </p> <p style="text-align: left"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left">Now offer the ASE.&nbsp; He weighs it, but he may not even bother to do that, then gives you the money.&nbsp; No Assay required.&nbsp; That is the only difference between a privately produced bullion round and a government produced bullion round.</p> <p style="text-align: left"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left">Similar with Maple Leafs and Krugerrands.&nbsp; The liquidity of other government&#039;s (and corporate or bank produced) bullion rounds and ingots is directly related to that round&#039;s reputation, AND whether or not the intended purchaser has handled enough genuine specimens so they know what they are looking for.&nbsp; Back in the day (cold war era) I used to spend all day riding in the back of Brink&#039;s trucks moving bullion or methadone or stranger stuff from point a to b.&nbsp; </p> <p style="text-align: left"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left">&lt;It was a great, but also a very dangerous job.&nbsp; Besides robbers to deal with, sometimes the stacks tumbled on potholes and 2nd Ave used to have lots of those.&gt;&nbsp; </p> <p style="text-align: left"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left">Point is the ingots and bars (or slabs) usually had some interesting stamp marks on them.&nbsp; Credit Lyonnaise, Federal Republic of.., Peoples Democratic.., National Bank of.., Credit Suisse, etc.&nbsp; &lt;Gosh I wish I had a digital pocket camera in those long-ago days.&gt;&nbsp; Older bars had simple stamps.&nbsp; Newer bars (as the old ones were counterfeited) often had increasingly more complex stampings.&nbsp; Recorded and tracked Serial numbers too.&nbsp; Frankly, back then I thought the little Lyonaisse ingots had the prettiest stampings.&nbsp; Big ingots.&nbsp; Not the toy 1,000 gram ingots sold on Ebay, or the little tiny thing C. Eastwood takes out of the bag in Kelly&#039;s Heros, but big 30 (400 Oz.) or 75 pound (800 or 1,000 oz (forget which)) gold, silver or platinum bars.&nbsp; </p> <p style="text-align: left"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left">&lt;There is an old Lee V Cleef, Raquel Welch &amp; James Brown western B movie where at some point somewhere in Mexico (studio lot probably) one of the men picks up an ingot of the approximate size I write of with one hand and throws it underhanded across a large room.&nbsp; LOL.&nbsp; Arnold in his prime would have trouble with that.&gt;&nbsp; </p> <p style="text-align: left"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left">Many weird coins.&nbsp; Krugers, Ducats, Shekels.&nbsp; Stuff not found too often in the US, but often today counterfeited everywhere.&nbsp; Good luck trying to liquidate a box of gold Ducats to someone who has never seen and handled one before.&nbsp; Bring your ASEs to Dubai or Kathmandu and you would have similar fun trying to sell them there.&nbsp; This is why I mostly hold bullion from my own country.&nbsp; Consistency in manufacturing quality + recognition + reputation = Liquidity.&nbsp; </p> <p style="text-align: left"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left">Would I personally trust ANYTHING from the Sunshine mine to be what it claims to be without an assay?&nbsp; In a word, No.&nbsp; I have been watching or listening to tales about that hole in the ground for nearly 40 years.&nbsp; I have also experienced the alleged value of a load of Sunshine silver we were to deliver be adjusted downwards on receipt of an assay of a sample from the load before we left.&nbsp; True that was in the 70s.&nbsp; Does that mean those bars have vanished?&nbsp; That hole in the ground has had more owners than you can shake a stick at.&nbsp; They have been moving in and out of bankruptcy court since the 70s.&nbsp; Erroneous assays has been only one of their historical problems.&nbsp; To me the whole Liberty Dollar plot is only a sidebar issue.</p> <p style="text-align: left"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left">This ramble reminded me of something, and I will start a thread on it in bullion.</p> <p style="text-align: left"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left"><br /></p><p>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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