A pleasant 10oz surprise.

The other day @armshippie posted a nice piece from the US strategic silver stockpile. I found it very interesting and started to research it. The story behind it is unusual to say the least.

Fast forward to today. I had some extra time before work and decided to look through more of my stack. Some of these boxes/cases haven't seen the light of day in over 5yrs. I got discouraged in my stacking and pushed everything to the back of closet. Once in a while I would find a new piece and toss it in my drawer. So I pulled out a box and opened it.

Sitting right on top was this 10oz bar from the same US Strategic Silver Stockpile. My eyes lit up as I've been looking for one since seeing his. I have no idea when or where I got it but must have found it compelling then also. It's not the prettiest piece but every bit counts.

So the story behind the strategic stockpile starts in the early 1940's. During this time the University of California working on the Manhattan Project (unlimited amounts of conspiracy theories behind this) was trying new methods of enriching uranium. They asked the then Treasury Secretary, Daniel Bell, for 430 Million Troy ounces of silver. With the borrowed silver they made 1,000-troy-ounce (31 kg) silver bars that then was extruded into strips .625in thick, 3in wide and 40ft long. They sent the newly made strips to Allis-Chalmers to be wound onto magnetic coils used in the enrichment process. When the project was completed in the 1970's, they returned the Silver to the treasury with a loss of only 1/3,600,000.

In 1971 the precious metals would no longer be used in US coinage under Nixon (it ended in 1964 but dollars were not allowed to be redeemed for PM's anymore). In 1980 Carter abolished the Assay Commission. This caused the US to sell some of it's strategic silver stockpile on the open market. It's also said they sold to help stabilize the silver market after being cornered by the Hunt brothers.

If you notice on the bar you see a CC on the front. This stands for the Continental Coin Co. and not Carson City. They are the company who bought a good deal of the Silver Stockpile from the US. They then started stamping these 1oz, 10oz and 100oz rounds and bars. Wanting everyone to know where they got the silver from they proudly displayed that it was "MINTED FROM THE US STRATEGIC STOCKPILE" and many people thought it was a US mint porduct, but it is not.

I hope you liked my condensed history of the US Strategic stockpile along with a short history of this bar. For more in depth information on this subject click on the source links below. Thanks for reading!

Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project
http://ezinearticles.com/?Rare-American-Coins-and-the-1981-US-Assay-Silver-Dollar&id=8199899