I can see, based on your picture that some of the guns bars in your picture look like they are from the "American Weapons Hall of Fame" series. There is also another set of 36-bars that was minted by Lincoln Mint called "Weapons of the World" but those bars come in a wooden display case with a blue interior. When I saw your pic, I saw that there were four missing based on the indentions on the red part of the original case. You are missing 2 "long gun" bars and two "pistol" bars. I did not know which ones you are missing. It was hard to tell in the picture which ones you have. The 5th addition Archie Kidd silver art bar guidebook will list all 36 bars in that set. When I bought yesterday, there was no original box that came with it. Just the 32 bars. It was a broken set with no original box and no Certificate of Authenticity (COA). To be honest with you, I was not planning to complete the set, I plan to resell these and keep the ones that I like. I will probably keep the some of the "long gun" bars. I like those "long gun" bars lot more than the "pistol" bars.
I agree. No complaints from me. When this particular LCS buys sterling, he usually ships it off to a refinery that have it melted down. But since I have been buying a bunch of sterling bars and rounds (usually Franklin Mint) from this LCS in the last 4 months, this LCS will give me a shot at cherry picking the ones that I want before shipping the rest off to be melted down. It is hard for him to sell sterling to the public because most people want .999 silver. This LCS justs wants to get rid of it and it usually is better (and quicker) for him to ship it to a smelter than it is to sell it retail to the public and it justs sits there with very few buyers.
My mistake. You are right, it is the American Weapons Hall of Fame. I should probably figure out what I'm missing and complete the set. I just plan on passing it down to one of my daughters. My favorite is the Colt 1911.
What is interesting to me that the mintage is 5000 per bar. However, with the great melt of the late '70's/early '80's and places such as certain LCS, pawn shops, "we-buy-gold" places that melt down sterling silver (in every form), the current mintage for these bars is probably a lot lower than what was originally listed in the Archie Kidd book.
Some vintage '70's silver art bar rescues from a LCS this week: Episode # 34 of the '70's Silver Art Bar Show.
I picked up a few bars from one of my favorite sellers The casino donated $17 on the drive home so I popped into my local shop where I got in trouble for talking to a customer out in the parking lot after they had left the store on one of my previous trips...I was just telling them about the local coin club IF they wanted to know more about their coins....OOPS, the owner called me on it today and asked if I was looking to buy from his customers. I said DEFINITELY NOT. All is well and I scored a 1 ounce bar from international silver ingot co. The return of the $2 bill variety (big thumbs up) there goes the profit from the casino and $2 from my pocket.
The International Silver Ingot Company(ISIC) bar is an excellent score. Very hard to find IMO. Those have low mintages. For the record, I found only 3 ISIC silver art bars at the LCS's and coin shows during the 10+ years that I have been collecting old silver art bars.
Yeah won the auction. Now the fun starts, still don't know anything about them other then they're vintage I think 1970ish and cool. I shamelessly put one up in the classified to see if it would draw some attention to it and find more about them.
Depends on what the collector market is at that time. I remember seeing someone's posting about a dealers scrap bucket with pictures and it had a wide assortment. Makes one wonder what is actually around for certain bar populations.
Hard to find out certain details about every refiner, and allot didnt keep Records so at best its going to be a guess.
Many bars were melted in 1980 after the Hunt bros. drove up the silver price - nearly everyone holding silver bars wanted to cash in and refiners melted down smaller bars to create the jumbo COMEX compatible ingots - also, many private mints over-produced their .999 silver items in the 1970s and melted the excess inventory to make blanks for newer bars - exact pops of most bullion/art bars are just 'guesstimates'.
[QUOTE="FryDaddyJr, post: Look at this turkey[/QUOTE] Hmmm, what makes it a turkey? Maybe a rare bird.... A little background on the bar shows a limited edition of 500. HITLER’S ARMORED CAR Item Number: ISIC-29 Reference: Kidd 5th Ed. Mint: I.S.I.C. Content: .999 Fine Silver Year: 1975 Weight: 1 OZ Serialized: Yes Mintage: 500 Reverse Type: 2 Shape: Bar Country: United States
