Founded by Leon Hendrickson in 1949, SilverTowne is among the oldest and best-respected private silver mints in the country. Today, SilverTowne is best-known as an online dealer of precious metals, rare coins, and modern coins. Their site offers a wide array of silver bullion products, including those produced by government and private mints around the world, and silver products made by SilverTowne itself. The company is renowned for the silver bullion bars it produces. SilverTowne silver bars are uniquely designed with the needs of investors and collectors in mind.
SilverTowne Bars
The company is best-known for art bars, both in the retail and production side. SilverTowne also offers a wide variety of investment-grade silver bars for bullion investors. These tend to have a more basic appearance, while their art bars feature unique designs prized by collectors.
A 5 oz Silver Bar from the SilverTowne Mint
SilverTowne silver bars come in several sizes, including 1, 5, 10, 50, and 100 troy ounces. Their smaller-sized silver bars are minted or stamped. The larger bars are hand-poured. Each bar consists of 99.9% pure silver, and is marked with the bar’s purity and weight and the SilverTowne hallmark.
Over more than six decades, SilverTowne has created dozens of designs for silver bars. One popular version of SilverTowne silver bars features a prospector and a donkey. Most of these one- and five-ounce silver bars have a reverse printed with a waffle pattern. This design is often called the “SilverTowne Donkey Bar,” a reference to its unusual design.
Since SilverTowne also mints custom designs for many clients, there are many additional styles of silver art bars which carry the SilverTowne hallmark. One of the company’s recent designs carries a design similar to the U.S. buffalo head nickel, with a frosted finish on the obverse. This bar has been particularly popular among collectors of silver art bars.
Poured Silver Bars
SilverTowne’s larger silver bars are poured while liquid, into a bar form, instead of minted or stamped. The result is a less uniform bar than that created by other manufacturers. Many investors have come to expect this more uniform shape and finish than they find with SilverTowne silver bars. You should expect to see some unevenness and irregularities such as surface bubbles. Still, each hand-poured silver bar will contain the same weight of silver.
Investors’ reactions to SilverTowne hand-poured silver bars are mixed. Some complain about the uneven appearance of these bars. Others are not concerned about the appearance of the bar, and satisfied with the knowledge that each SilverTowne silver bar contains the same amount of silver. Some investors actually prefer SilverTowne’s silver bars because they are unique and original.
Purchasing and Prices
SilverTowne silver bars may be bought through their own website, or through many precious metal dealers who carry their silver bars. Investors often report finding lower per-ounce premiums on SilverTowne bars than bars from other mints. In particular, when buying the bars directly from SilverTowne, you will see lower prices, since the company is both the producer and the seller, cutting out the middleman.
