My favorite 1970's silver art bar "finds"

I bought this Tuesday (March 23) at one of my local coin dealers......................





It is a 75th Anniversary Coca-Cola New Orleans silver art round (WWM-69). It was minted by the World Wide Mint in 1977 and it is part of the Coca-Cola 75th Anniversary silver set. I believe that this is the only silver art round in the Coca-Cola 75th anniversary set. The rest of silver pieces in the 75th anniversary silver set are bar shaped.

This Coke silver art is not a 1-oz silver art round. I weighed it on my digital scale and it weighed 0.90 troy oz (28 grams). That weight is actually the correct weight according to another silver art bar collector who is a Coca-Cola silver art bar expert. This Coke silver art round is almost the same size as a 1-oz silver American eagle. I paid $25 for this Coke art round (March 23 spot silver was $16.99/oz). On a relative basis, the price IMO is a fair price considering that Coke 75th Anniversary silver art ingots usually go for much more than $25 on ebay.

Overall, I am very happy with this purchase. I like this Coke silver art round a lot.

 

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Honestly speaking, ebay is the best place to sell silver art bars of any size because you have a larger pool of potential buyers online. Ebay collectors are willing to pay a large premium over spot for silver art bars because there is a very strong desire and a demand for silver art bars on ebay.

The next best place that I can think of to selling the Norman Rockwell Four Freedoms series is at a coin show. If there is a coin show that is close to where you live, then you can try that venue as well. The advantage of selling at a coin show would be that when they sell, you can get your cash up front instead of waiting for an online payment.

The disadvantage that I see of selling at a coin show would be that you may not have a big enough marketplace of potential buyers to look at your art bar set. Then there is that expense of setting up a table at a coin show and that is a factor to consider if you wanted to sell at a local coin show.

As for the spotting, I would recommend leaving it as it is. That is probably some toning and some collectors like toning on their silver art bars.

Ebay is as close to the "real world" that you can get in terms of value over spot. I am sure that you could get a decent premium over spot on Hamilton Mint bars but it may not be as big a premium when you factor in ebay and paypal fees. Since it is a complete set, then you might get more for them on ebay if you sold them as a set. Complete silver art bar sets tend to do well on ebay based on some ebay auctions that I have seen in the past.

If you sold those Hamilton Mint art bars at a local dealer, then the local dealer will only give you the metal value of those art bars minus a discount.

Ebay is the best place to sell them to get the best price for them in my opinion.

 

Wow - this thread reminded me of something I had - I bought it new (1975) - and have no idea what I paid for it. I am only posting it because I haven't seen this one anywhere in many years. Madison mint issued.

Poor scan, but it looks great in person. I just figure its worth melt value.

 

This is great. Thanks a lot for your long and thoughtful reply! I'm brand new here. Loved collecting coins as a kid, and just picked up a few peace dollars (for about $12/) for when the tooth fairy comes for my son. Bought these Rockwell's on a total whim since I saw them going for what I suspected was less than spot at 2.08 oz per (paid $82 + $19 ship). Never sold anything on Ebay before, but I'll look into it. Suspect I'll just put 'em in the sock drawer for my kid though. Glad to have found cointalk, and looking foward to whetting the ole appetite after 30 something years!

 

As always it's nice to see this thread again. I had one of the Hamilton mint
bars, Freedom of Worship. I traded it and $20 for a mint state 1918 Canadian large cent.
Right now I am bidding on a Lighthouse art bar one oz. It is by the US Silver Corp. My bid as it stands is $19.13 did I overbid?

 

Here's something fun: found the original newspper ad for the Rockwell series.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?n...hssAAAAIBAJ&sjid=I8kEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3660,1745397

 

All so very nice.

 

Coke, the real thing..............









It is a 1-oz Coca-Cola - Shelbyville, KY silver art bar (WWM-60). It was minted by the World Wide Mint in 1976. Serial # 000668. I bought it last month at my local coin dealer and I paid $25.00 for it (spot silver closed at $16.56/oz at that time). $25.00 for a Coke silver bar is not too bad considering that Coke silver bars usually sell on ebay for much more than $25.00.

 

Nice deal !!

 

I sold the following 11 art bars plus + 43 other silver art bars:

1-oz 1974 USSC Happy Anniversary (see post # 26)

1-oz World Inc Mint art bar (post #33)

1-oz Benjamin Disraeli (post #76)

1-oz John Hart (post # 62)

1-oz Cox-Nixon (post # 64)

1-oz Air Force (post # 27)

1-oz Prospector (post # 60)

1-oz USSC Boston Tea Party (post #55)

1-oz USSC Secretariat (post #51)

1-oz Madison New Years (post #41)

20 gram Silver Mint flag of Bolivia (post #42)

It is very rare that I sell any silver art bars but I sold these because these (and the other 43 bars) were impulsive buys. That is about a total of 53 troy oz's of silver that I sold today and I plan to use the proceeds to buy silver art bars that are on my '70's silver art bar "wish list". I could have sold them on ebay but most of the art bars that I sold today would not have fared well after factoring ebay and paypal fees.

I did some "spring cleaning" of my collection and the remaining silver art bars that are currently in my collection are the silver art bars that I am keeping because those are the ones that I really wanted to collect. As a result of selling 54 silver art bars today, I currently have about 100 silver art bars remaining in my silver art bar collection and I plan to grow that collection from this point since I have my silver art bar "wish" completed. There are more '70's SABs that I am looking to collect and I have made my final '70's silver art bar wish list and from this point on, I will go by that list to buy the '70's silver art bars that I truly want to collect.

 

1970 Silver Art,

I've done the same thing a couple of months ago, and only kept the ones i really loved. I'm going to keep my collction within 5 diffrent mints (no themes, just trying to get all different minted bars) : Bluegrass Mint, CEECO, Mother Lode Mint, Mount Everest Mint and Silversword.
I'll be really happy when i can complete these 5 mints within my lifespan, as some of these bars are quite rare (AND expensive)!
Thanks to the fact that i sold a lot of 'unwanted' bars, i was able to purchase some of the Bluegrass Mint bars.

 

Yeah I want to have have some extra cash just in case I find more World Wide Mint Coca-Cola silver art bars, I also have a "lifetime" goal to collect bars from the Great House Productions, Green Country Mint, The Mint, The USSC "Wildlife series" and more art bars from the Hamilton Mint "America the Beautiful" series. There are many more art bars from different mints that I also want to collect but the ones that I mentioned are the ones that I have my eye on collecting once I find one locally at the right price. If I can find a "canceled" die silver art bar at my local coin dealer or at a coin show, then I would consider that a bonus but I do not see that happening since they are extremely hard to find locally.

 

You're going to have a hard time finding the 'Greathouse' and 'The Mint' bars at your local dealer imo.
A Cancelled die bar is even harder to find (they usualy got a mintage of 20 pieces, or less), that's why i'm so happy i got the opportunity to buy two of them from Archie Kidd's 'Bluegrass Mint'. Those bars will stay in my collection till my kids decide to sell them afer i'm gone

 

Did they ever make a Budweiser ingot?

 

I've only seen the Budweiser Coin series. 2004 I think

I stumbled onto this thread because I was researching my collection value and I'll be posting everything for sale over the next 1-2 weeks. I'm selling about 3 troy pounds of silver art bars and some gold eagles and starting them all cheap with no reserve.

Some of the bars are (3)Coke 1901-75 75th Cincinnati, Freedom to Worship, Liberty c1986, Our Greatest Americans (Washington, Lincoln), Statue of Liberty Radison Mint, several paper money artbars $100, $1000, $100,000 (1£ Troy) and a bunch of other 1oz bars. The larger bars are starting way under spot and the 1oz bars at $20.


If anyone is interested you can do a search for "$100,000 Wilson" on eBay and inside the listing is a link to the rest of my gold and silver listing.

Financial stress is forcing this sale.

Cheers everyone

 

I love that Peacock.

 

That is true Orpheus72 but I will not give up yet. I might get lucky and find one of those art bars for a low premium over spot. You never know. One year, I might get lucky at one of the local coin shows and end up finding a lot of silver art bars that are on my "wish list" at a low price over spot.

If I somehow ended up finding a Greathouse bar at the right price, then that will be my silver art bar find of the year for me. However, I will admit that the odds of finding a Greathouse silver art bar at a local dealer or at a local coin show for a low premium over spot ($5 over or less) are about the same as winning the Powerball lottery.

The odds are very low that I will find a Greathouse silver art bar at a local coin dealer or a local coin show for $5 over spot (or less) but I will not give up yet.

 

The one below is my latest purchase. I may be wrong on this one but i believe it is the error version of "The General". I think 10,000 were minted before the error was realized and so they switched to the correct locomotive

I paid $29 for it

 

Actually what you have is the "corrected" version of the 1972 Madison Mint "The General" silver art bar. The "corrected" art bar has a shorter second cabin and does not have the mis-spelling of W. & A. R. R.

The error version of "The General" (MAD-9E). will have a longer second cabin behind the main part of the train and will have the mis-spelling on the longer second cabin. Here is what the error version of "The General" will look like:





It might be hard to see in my pictures but on the longer cabin on the left hand side of this bar, it says "W. & A. A. R. R.". That is mis-spelled and the correct spelling should be "W. & A. R. R.". That mis-spelling is what makes this the "error" version of the 1972 Madison Mint "The General" silver art bar.

 

This is a 1-oz "Kitty Hawk" silver art bar (USSC-102). It was minted by the United States Silver Corporation (USSC) in 1973. I bought this bar today at a coin show and I paid $20 for this art bar (spot silver finished at $17.70/oz).