Medal Ingot

Medal Ingot found in back yard?

The front side says “J. Parsons & CO. COL Assayers 1860″ and is surrounded by two wreaths. The reverse side is an eagle. It is approximately half of my pointer finger (length) by a quarter of my pointer finger (hight). I think it is made out of silver, but i can’t be sure.

Hard to find much info, one article pertaining to Parsons and others was quite lengthy and make blood shoot out of your eyes it’s so boring, but this may be some tid bit anyhow,, The Eagle on the Bar could be from the Eagle Mining Co. There is some controversy that the bar is a fake for some reason see link,

# Parsons & Co.
John Ford said in an interview in Coin World on September 6, 1999 that he bought this bar from Paul Franklin in November 1952 for $225. Ford sold it to Don Keefer for over $500. The piece has long been controversial – Ford has referred to it as “infamous” (Van Winkle 1990, Part II, 48). The bar has all its elements punched in with individual letter punches, a toilsome, expensive, and improbable method. The bar has no security edges; and it uses carats to indicate fineness, which was no longer used for bars in 1860 (Owens 2000, 50). The Parsons bar also suffers from the forger’s dodgy math: it uses a gold price of $20.27. A second Parsons bar was displayed at the 2002 ANA Convention in New York City, in an elaborate velvet-lined presentation box with an engraved inscription on silver saying that this bar was the first gold bar made by Parsons in Colorado. A third Parsons bar was photographed in the Numismatist in September 1983. These other two bars share the same problems as the Smithsonian example.

Holabird, Evans, and Fitch, although declaring that they have reached no conclusion about the Parsons bar, say that their testing of the Smithsonian bar casts serious doubt upon it. The carat fineness stamped on the Smithsonian Parsons bar converts to 771 fine. But when tested, it turned out to be 877 fine. There is no reason to share the caution of Holabird, Evans, and Fitch. This degree of variation is far beyond the error one would expect from an assayer in the field. The Parsons bar is a forgery. Not surprisingly, since it was one of the very first bars that John Ford bought from Paul Franklin, it has the most significant errors. Franklin would improve his skills in forgery dramatically as the 1950s proceeded.

Medal of Honor Walkthrough HD: Part 5