I picked up this silver (?) round for slightly over melt. It weighs 31.1 gm and is about 39 mm in diameter. I am less interested in what it is worth (I assume melt only) than what it is, who made it, and where I can find more information about "coins" like this.
It's just what you said it was - a silver round. It's not a coin. It was made by one of the private mints like Franklin Mint or the Patrick Mint.
Note I put coin in quote marks in the first post. There has never been a question that it is not legal tender. But is there any catalog or any other source of information about these tokens/rounds/... ? Any way to get any more history on this thing?
Somewhere in the 7-million plus hits for a Google search on "silver rounds" is all the information you could ever want to know about them.
There is no book of silver round designs that I know of. A few years ago I tried to research the origin of many silver round designs I own with little success. I'm afraid a google search will turn up a lot of sellers of rounds but not much real information on them. It is an overlooked area of exonumia that needs someone to research it a little better. Some of the producers and designs of silver rounds include: Johnson Matthey [Bill of Rights rounds] Englehard [American Prospector rounds] Northwest Territorial Mint A-Mark [Liberty Bell rounds] Sunshine Mining [Sunshine Mining rounds] I'm sure there are many others. It's too bad there isn't a book on this. Maybe there is just too many varieties to catalogue them all. It seems that the history of this little sideline of the hobby will be lost forever.
I think part of the problem is that private mints make rounds for various customers under contract, so that helps obscure the source or origin. My favorites are the US Strategic Stockpile ones. In any case, maybe some day there will be a book, since I think some will become collectable. (Lots of people already collect them).
