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A. P. Molitor Silver Ingot. ca. 1863-1867, San Francisc

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money Start Price:3,750.00 USD Estimated At:15,000.00 - 25,000.00 USD
A. P. Molitor Silver Ingot. ca. 1863-1867, San Francisc
<B>A. P. Molitor Silver Ingot.</B></I> ca. 1863-1867, San Francisco. The top side is imprinted: OZ 4 02 / SILVER 898 $4.66 / GOLD 069 $5 73. A partial Internal Revenue stamp is seen on the right portion of the top side. One of the long, narrow sides reads No 804, while the other long, narrow side has the curved A.P. Molitor company stamp.<BR> This small 4.02 ounce silver ingot has high gold fineness for a silver dore' bar, possibly indicating or suggesting an earlier date such as 1863, the year of the Gould & Curry bonanza on the Comstock in Virginia City. It cannot predate 1863 because of the Internal Revenue bullion punch on the reverse. The earlier mined Comstock ores had a higher percentage of gold, which dropped radically with the depth of mining. The ingot is probably not from Molitor's 1865 foray to Julian, California, the San Diego County gold district where he briefly set up shop in 1865 before moving back to San Francisco.<BR> The bullion gang punch of A. P. Molitor is on the side of the ingot in an arch, applied in the same manner as the small Kellogg & Humbert <I>S.S. Central America</B></I> ingots and the two known silver Kellogg & Hewston ingots. It is identical in style and approximate size to the A. P. Molitor bullion punch seen in the famous Fricot Nugget photograph taken for the 1867 International Paris Exposition by San Francisco photographer Carleton Watkins (and others). The rest of the ingot is quite crude, and it lacks an assay chip, which is not always present on small ingots. Its genuineness is unquestioned, since the bullion punch visible in the Fricot photograph was not available or known until recently.<BR> This may be the only A. P. Molitor silver ingot extant.<BR><I>From The Kagin Reference Collection of Frontier Ingots.</B></I>