sixgun

i will take if still available.

A jester's head

I don't know where this comes from but there is this hallmark on an .835 item. Suggesting it was Dutch / German on account of the 0.835 silver.

A few silver bits from @arshimo2012

If you put the real thing alongside the fake you can see the fake is absolutely diabolical

Well this is the longest saga i have experienced. This is an interesting but unidentified 1kg bar. I suspect it was made for a jewellery chain store as a gift or presentation type of product back in the day - could be 1980's at a guess. The style of the font is reminiscent of another bar i have which was an electrical company promo product. Well I bought the bar and then Royal Mail delivered it to the wrong house. After a fortnight the people at the wrong house contacted us and we retrieved the bar. All's well that ends well I suppose.

£2 - it's an auction now. Finishes in 5 minutes, better be quick.

I'm always looking for something unique.

Certainly the absence of a serial number is generally the sign of a fake bar. The OMP looks ok. The design changed in 2010 bar. I have read that the current version has a mask that stands slightly proud of the bridge of the nose. The coins have smoother details and less of them and the ears of wheat in the head dress of the Lady is simplified. i see the left most coin is well clear of the rest of the coins - it isn't clear of the body of the coins normally. i have seen one that is and that didn't have a serial number. i think unless you are willing to take a punt on it and you are able to test it then i would give it a pass.

Argenta - members have sold bars from these people Here we see Baird casting bars

Here is my pal Jim Forsythe and his outfit. The clip starts with them making cast bars.

How does this work when there is no pouring with a cast bar? The silver shot in the mould melts en masse which means you get more uniformity. Agreed if you are not speedy about a poured bar you will get lines and layers as the silver solidifies whilst other parts are still liquid.

This video shows a 250g Umicore cast bar - we can see a horizontal ding on one edge of the bar - looks like an after casting mark Here Salivating Silver talks about cast and poured bars

This Umicore bar is a cast bar - so there won't be the cooling lines one might see with a poured bar. A measured weight of silver shot in put into a mould and then the moulds are put into a furnace. The silver melts and runs out to fill the mould. You can get exact weights on these bars which aren't possible with a hand poured bar, unless you are really lucky. The mould will be smooth sided and regular. They are machine cut in graphite. The bottom of the bar should come out of the mould with a flat bottom - we can see in image 4 the bottom is slightly curved. The bar has been bent but the mould will be straight and flat. We also see the significant transverse indentations in image 2. Could the bar have had something really heavy deforming it whilst it was still hot after coming out of the mould? i haven't see Umicore bars made so i don't know what the exact process is but i would expect these deformities have occur to the bar after it has come out of the mould.

You need to be very careful about buying silver since Brexit and the UK being cut off from the low tax silver that used to be so plentiful. As i am in the EU i can get 2024 Britannias like this - that's £20.87. Granted there is delivery but i get goldsilver.be to keep the silver in the client vault and send it when i have a good lot. Personally i would not buy from UK dealers unless there was something i really liked in the margin scheme. I do buy silver off TSF. There are good deals to be had. There are good deals b/c i buy some of them - but often you have to be very quick. If you are 'investing' then you should not be buying silver with VAT on it if you can avoid that and you can. You are investing in silver - not collecting a particular coin you can only find at a dealer's. Buy what you like but get a liking for pieces that represent good value and are easy to sell when the day comes you need to sell. If you don't do that and you have to sell in a hurry you may well come unstuck. However if you have items that were already in the aftermarket and were good value, it means someone else has experienced the potential loss and not you. i used the phrase 'investing'. Remember you are not an investor, not a trader - you are a hobbyist, a collector. This may be important when it comes to selling b/c you are selling your private property, your chattels. You do not have to face any CGT issues then. Worth searching for chattels on the forum for the discussions. Try to avoid ebay - it is full of scam merchants. i try to avoid buying low numbers of coins - the postage per coin is too high. i do look to having the coins sent SD - right now i have a problem with a bar i bought. The Royal Mail had it the parcel had been delivered except the photo of the front door wasn't the right one - it wasn't a door anywhere near the delivery address. It turns out it was a house 1.5 miles away. The post office has apparently said they will get someone to go round to the address (which i do not know the identity of) and get the parcel back. It has all been tracked and it is all insured. Shlt happens sometimes.

If still available i will take it

i will take the old bar - i have no idea what it is. Probably a short run order from donkey's years ago - I'll probably never know. Silver is silver at the end of the day.

If you cannot ID the bar you are dealing with general bullion. That has to be the default position.

Yeah - i can see that now. There are a number of jewellery outfits in the States trading under the name Gold Connection. In the 1970's and 80's there were lots of silver bars being made by every Tom, Dlck and Harry. This is a cast bar so this makes it something more serious but it could be something a company had made for them. I have an AEG bar - now AEG never made a silver bar in its existence but someone obviously cast some bars for them. The stamp on your bar has the same open font look about it, where the letter is just outlined rather than the full extent of the letter stamped into the metal. So as a bit of a wild guess i would say this is something a precious metal / jewellery outfit had made in the 1980's. A lot of these early bars have been melted down and there are bars that are just unindentifiable so to speak. The people who made them are long gone. As i say if it cannot be identified then it is just another 1 kg bar. What drives the price of bars is if there is more than one person after them but when it is an unidentified mystery bar there is no collector base. It becomes a total punt for the buyer unless he can ID it. The bar is worth what the next man is prepared to pay.

Nope - i don't know what this is. i am struggling to make out the script above 'Connection'. Looks like a G and then perhaps an o..... If it can't be identified then personally i would see it as just another silver 1kg bar.

I'll take both

In all honesty i am not sure why anyone would want to collect these other than to put them in the melting pot as an act of kindness. Anyone who bought this from that website has already taken a Kojak haircut on the way to the assylum.

A war crime was narrowly averted.