About 35 years ago in NYC I was lucky enough to handle lots of different types of bullion bars, loading and unloading them into the back of an armored truck all summer long. Many were of the London Good Delivery type (400 ounce bars). Others were 1 Kilo or more. One of the things that struck me back then was the many different types of stamps different bullion bars from different places had. Holographic images and computer tracking were decades away, so one of the ploys the refiners used was increasingly more complex stamps. Some of the stamps were intricate enough so they could be considered art in and of themselves. Others (especially the older ingots) weren't as labor intensive to create. Sadly pocket digital cameras hadn't been invented yet or I would have photographed most of them. That was then. I would assume many of the older bars have been melted down and restruck as countries and refiners changed boundaries and names. Alternatively, some of you may still have one sitting in an attic or a safety box somewhere. Back then, some coins, bars and ingots from certain lands and authorities, if they looked right and the paperwork was good, were accepted without hesitation. Others, even if the paperwork was right, sometimes had to make a pit stop and be assayed or re-assayed. I look around today and see little mention of the hundreds of refiner's stamps or artful designs I used to see. Sometimes, such as when doing Embassy or Consulate pickup/deliveries, I saw bars and hunks of bullion that had weight markings not of the Troy ounce, grain or gram variety. In those pre-Internet days it took me years to learn what some of them meant. Large cast bars are often soft and 24 carat. Old ones often have dents and dings in them because they are stored in stacks. Also in trucks, sometimes when we hit bumps the stacks tumble and abrade. There was no such thing as shrink wrapped in the 70s. Just crates and straps. Bullion was usually uncrated when I saw it. 3 ingots to this location, 3 to that one, pick up 2, then 5 to that location. Sometimes fork lifts on wooden skids. Sometimes the bars fell off the forklift and dinged that way. Sometimes designs changed over the years. Sometimes Mints in different locations, even when under the same authority (as in Denver vs. San Francisco) had totally different appearing stamps, such as London's stamps vs. Perth, Australia's. Bars that are small enough to be stamped out often have more intricate stamps. Many small bars (and coins) are made of the harder 22 carat gold to resist abrasion and wear. The size of the bar sometimes necessitates a larger or smaller stamp. Tael, Talo and Tahil. Would you consider accepting a bar identified as 4 Talo? 1/3 of the planet population prefers those terms. You should learn them if you haven't already. Below are some terms I learned over the years, and also some gold bullion stamp samples looked up and submit for your viewing. Hopefully new images will continue to be added. _______________________________________________________ A sovereign is usually about .235 Troy ounces (or 113 grains) of 22K gold. Sovereigns weigh less than gold guineas, but both are considered more or less equal to an English pound. A Tael or Tahil is usually about 1.2 ounces Troy or 37.8 grams. In different countries and in different regions of the same countries the weight had variance locally in different years, hence the 'about.' It is a unit of weight, so it can be found in many metal forms. Gold and silver are only two. Brass is not uncommon. It is used or encountered in Southeast Asia, Japan, Korea and China. A 5 Tael 'Biscuit' bar weighs about 6 ounces and 187 grains. Their name (biscuit) is self-explanatory when you see one. A cast hunk the size of a biscuit. Tola, an unit of measurement found in India and surrounding countries. It is now accepted to be 3/8 of one Troy ounce or 180 grains. Except that it was also used in Aden & Zanzibar where it was decreed to be equal to only 175.0 grains. Historically prior to the arrival of the English with their weight system the weight of a Tola had been the weight of 100 seeds of the Ratti plant, hence the local variations. Silver Rupees minted by the British East India Company (1833) had a weight of 180 grains, or one Tola, which allowed the Tola to become a currency term. It became the standard measurement in India for gold and silver bullion. Nepal still mints Tola sized gold coins. In addition to central Asia the term is often encountered in mid-east bazaars where gold and silver can be traded. It should be noted that Tola bullion is often intentionally cast with rounded edges to aid in smuggling the bullion across borders by secreting it inside a body cavity. A Ten Tola gold bar weighs about 3.75 ounces. British Crown coin, 1 ounce of Sterling silver. Obsolete coinage. English Crown coin silver, about 1 ounce of 92.5 (sterling) silver, reduced in 1920 to 50%, then no silver after 1947 (copper/nickel composition), except for special 92.5% sterling Proof coins. A copper-nickel Crown in 1951 became 5 Shillings, and in 1971 became worth 25 Pence (pennies). Crowns made after 1990 are worth 5 pounds. Very confusing. Gold Guinea, about 129.4 grains of 11/12 (fine) gold. In 1717, Great Britain adopted the gold standard, at a rate of one guinea to 129.438 grains (8.38 g) of crown gold, which was 22 carat gold. Guineas more or less equate to 21 shillings or 1.05 decimal pounds when describing the size of a transaction. English Crown gold, about 1 ounce of 22 carat gold . London Good Delivery bar is permitted to contain a weight, ranging between 350 oz and 430 oz Troy of fine gold (equivalent to about 10.9 kg to 13.4 kg of fine gold). That is the current Russian Federation size definition. Most countries try for a more narrow weight range with 400 ounces being the target. London Good Delivery bullion bars, by international agreement, tend to become valueless when stored outside a recognized and approved bullion vault In order to meet the definition of being a London Good Delivery bar ALL of the following conditions are required. (i) must be at least 99.5% pure, (ii) must come in bars of a standard shape weighing about 400 oz (iii) must have been accurately assayed so that the exact gold content of the bar is known (weight and purity are stamped on the bar) (iv) must have been manufactured by one of a listed group of refiners, and (iv) in almost all cases are only accepted from one of a very small number of accredited bullion vaults/couriers. If a 400 ounce bar ever leaves (except while in transit by an approved courier (such as Brinks) an approved bullion depository it must be re-assayed with the new asay value and authentication authority stamped on the bar before it can be again placed in an approved bullion depository. 400 ounce bars cost about $558,000 apiece (June 2013), but you can't (usually) take it home and should leave it in the vault you bought it in or pay someone to transfer it to a different vault.
wow. never knew the stampings were intricate, and had such history. love all the pictures. you are a wealth of knowledge sir....did any of those bars ever "fall off the truck?"
No not like you mean by 'fall off.' At least not any truck I was on. What I did see unfortunately more than once was scrape marks on the truck walls. If we had a lot of bullion to deliver, it was often on skids. There was no such thing as shrink wrap in those days, so what we had was a few straps, sometimes with a cargo blanket underneath. This was a good system, IF the truck didn't hit a pothole or get sideswiped by some car. The issue for me was I was riding in the same cargo compartment of the truck with my little Ithca or Remington 12 gauge. Yes there was a little folding jump seat like you used to see the stewardess use on planes. More than once there was no room to unfold it. So when we hit the bump, if the angle was correct, I was ducking dodging. Very early in the game it was learned, when a flying 400 oz bar bent the barrel, that the shotgun was best laid flat somewhere and not angled in a somewhat erect position. NYC law at that time required the gun be kept inside a sheath or a scabbard since it had shells in it and it was in a vehicle. Whatever. Anyway, more than once the impact of a flying 400 oz bar could leave a nice silver or gold scuff mark on a rivet head. That was a true pain as damage to the loads had to be reported. Sometimes the guy in the back (me) would get yelled at and accused of improper stacking and have to explain what happened in writing. Of course the driver ramming a pothole hard enough to rattle the filings in your teeth was the usual cause. At one stage in that mid 70s era we were advised to the extent practical to avoid 2nd and 3rd Ave because of the potholes, also caution on the FDR, the Queensboro, the Major Deegan, etc, yada, yada. I want to point out, Driver and Co-Driver were a team, I was a filler person hitting days off and the like. Some teams had regular 3rd guards. A lot of the guards I worked with were really nice guys. Cops and prison guards holding PT jobs, retired cops or soldiers and similar. Some I was quite happy to call my friends. Went to their homes, met wives and kids, etc. I moved on in 77 and left that industry. being from NYC I continued to get the NY papers so I could keep up. It was with some sadness that over the next 10 years or so every single one of the former teams whose members I called my friends was murdered in one robbery or another. A route called BX-1, 2 crazy hippies (HS and Army buddies, MPs) who lived next door to each other in Throgs Neck or Whitestone (forget which). They were considered crazy by everyone, because every day at lunch they would bring the truck home for lunch and just leave it in the driveway while they went in for lunch and a quicky up or down stairs with their wives. Didn't matter to them if the truck was full or not, they figured it was a good neighborhood so it would be safe. Their wives made a superb lunch. I ate there several times. Maybe 5 years after I left was their murder. One of the wives had a secret lover and a drug problem. One day they came home for lunch and the lover and the wife killed everyone then ran with a few bags from the truck. Brooklyn 1. Great guys. Brooklynites from birth. Youse guys, and all that. I liked them a lot. They had 1 bad habit. One of them had an in-law who owned a deli. Their route had no variance. So every day at lunch time (always at the same time) they parked the truck in front of the deli and went in for great sandwiches. After a decade or so, someone finally noticed. They pulled up for lunch the doors opened for them to get out, and a volley of gun fire killed them on the spot and the truck was looted. Queens 4, nice old guys, retired firemen. Stupid factory paid its employees in cash. One door in and walk down a long, long hallway and up a narrow flight of stairs with the money. Always workers coming and going during the delivery. Halfway to the stairs when the non-employees coming down the stairs opened fire. Manhattan 3, an OTB parlor. Picked up the days receipts and gunned down halfway back to the truck. Stupid place had a fire hydrant and a no loading zone in front so it was a half block walk. And on and on. All of my friends from those days. Got so I just stopped reading the New York papers.
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