Collection Highlights - Vintage American Pacific Mint Bar

Collection Highlights -

Today I have a nice piece of vintage silver from the American Pacific mint. I actually thought that this was a apmex bar, or maybe some other well-known mint bar when I first looked at it.

Turns out this one is from the American Pacific mint that was started in california, like many of the vintage mints that we have found over the years. It was incorporated in 1965 in Nevada and then moved to california. It looks like they managed to survive over the years changing several times and eventually renamed themselves to the devil's gold and silver exchange. The most recent information I saw was that they are still in operations.

agroundroundworld.com American Pacific Mint

Must Be Rare - Massive Price Over Spot

To confirm that I identified this part correctly via the APM mint mark, I found a couple links on eBay and it appears that this may be a rather rare bar since it recently sold this week for $85 plus $10 shipping. That's quite a hefty over spot price and while I do love collecting I do also get tempted with selling for a massive profit and turning 1 oz into four with the opportunity to find another rare nugget like this one.

Obverse

The front of the bars coming in quite strong, like normal bars and rounds from this time it focuses on the American flag and an eagle. This is the first time I believe I have seen an eagle carrying a flag while flying versus the eagle being majestic while sitting somewhere or standing. Aside from its unique combination of the two I think it's a fine looking bar that has really good detail on the eagle and the flag.

Reverse

There's a couple of different mints who do this on the reverse of their bars. I can't remember at the top of my head who else has a similar approach I'll have to dig through my collection and find it. Not sure if it was Sunshine mint, or engelhard or someone else who had a similar approach to putting their mint name on the back of the bar in a continuous fashion like this. Either way I think it actually looks good in my opinion they should have shifted it over by about a character and a half so that it was centered in a bar and is going right down the middle.

Either way this is a great vintage piece to add to my collection. If I find any more I'll be sure to grab them considering their potential premium that they carry, it's like a treasure hunt every time you go in the LCS and look for unknown silver