Samurai Silver Bars.....

Great stuff Trout, I thought I smelled a fish, pardon the pun, lol....

That is why I would always post here and get the heads up on stuff like this. Not that anything short of you coming back saying that was a genuine 140 plus year old Samurai bar made of pure high quality .999 silver would make me pull the trigger on that, lol....

It was more of a curiosity thing than anything, as I had seen them listed before.....

I love the sell pitch, and if he was being honest it may read like...."If this great piece could talk, just imagine the story's that this hand poured 6 month old bar could tell made of the cheapest(enter here the worst low grade junk metal that exists) we could find!" ....

I would think real ones, be it not much silver content would have some historical value to the right collector, as would a bronze Roman coin for example....

These "ingot coins" are considered a legitimate part of Japan's coinage history, marking the transition from a purely Chinese-style silver-as-bullion economy to a silver-as-coinage economy. You can find them listed in the Krause world coin catalogues. This particular type is indeed as the seller describes, a 1 shu dating from the beginning of the Meiji period, 1868-1869, listed in Krause as KM/C# 12a. This was the last of the series before regular Western-style Japanese coins were produced. They weigh about 1.9 grams (1.88 grams is the book weight) and are typically around .880 fine.

The seller could tone down the "Samurai" hype a bit, and doesn't seem to know which way is up (none of his five pictures are right way up), but apart from that, as far as I can tell the coin is legitimate and the current bid price ($12.50) is more than fair; my 2002 edition Krause lists them at $40 in this condition. I paid $50 for one exactly like this from a local dealer in 2002.

This seller needs to feel the business end of one of these

trout you crack me up mate..thank you