CASCADE REFINING DATE-STAMPED INGOTS

You've likely seen Cascade Refining ingots offered for sale on eBay and other platforms from time to time. Given their 1980 era vintage and infrequent availability, we have good reason to believe they are quite rare. Cascade Refining ingots are beautifully poured in old world character, all odd-weight and individually hand-stamped oneof-a-kind ingots, often compared with the likes of Homestake Mining, Bunker Hill, and US Assay. A unique and signature characteristic of Cascade Refining ingots is that their serial number in fact indicates the production date.

To illustrate, the above photo denotes a serial number of 122480, translating to 12 = December, 24 = 24th day of the month, and 80 = 1980. What the heck were they doing working on Christmas Eve anyway?! Santa would not be pleased. This date-serial format was used for over 95% of Cascade Refining's retail production ingots. There are, however, a scant quantity of 5-digit serial numbers with no date association that we have yet to decipher, and these may possibly have been the result of stamping errors, an occurrence we are all too familiar with in vintage Engelhard ingots.

Cascade Refining, Inc. produced silver and gold ingots between 1977 and 1993. While their production of gold ingots was quite limited, silver production included approximate weight class categories of 5oz, 7oz, 10oz, 25oz and 100oz ingots, and the company continues to produce 1oz silver rounds today. The rarity of these beautiful examples is highlighted by the fact we have logged only 208 Cascade Refining serial numbers across every weight class and composition since we started studying these pieces a decade ago. Total estimated mintage for all examples presented on our Cascade Refining Definitive Page suggest less than 4,500 ingots were ever produced. This indicates we have logged approximately 4.6% of Cascade's total production. This 'logged' percentage is consistent with ingot production we have recorded for other refiners of this era, once again confirming that our estimated mintage numbers are reliably accurate.

History demonstrates that similar ingots predominantly minted following the 1979/1980 melts had a higher percentage survival rate and were/are cherished and held by strong hands. The beauty of these classically produced ingots, along with their unique date-stamp serial numbers, were the intriguing characteristics that saved most of these examples from being melted. Ironically, most collectors have sourced these pieces from Utah, as the City of Layton, home of Cascade Refining, Inc., is in fact just north of Salt Lake City.

To read the complete article, see:
RARE DATE-STAMPED INGOTS (https://allengelhard.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/AGWire-Cascade-Refining-10-10-20.pdf)

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