FOUND! CACHE OF 5 SILVER INGOTS!!

[bronzecannons]

Gentlemen,

Today I found a cache of 5 Silver Ingots weighing a total of 5.5 lbs! It was less than a foot deep.

INGOT DETAILS​

​

1. 0.85 lbs. 1.750 inches diameter​

2. 1.25 lbs. 1.850 inches diameter​

3. 1 lb. 1.755 inches diameter​

4. 0.90 lbs. 1.70 inches diameter​

5. 1.30 lbs. 1.92 inches diameter​

​

Total Combined Weight of 5.5 lbs.​

Has anyone ever seen Silver ingots like this? I wanted to confirm if they are Silver but due to the COVID-19 all the pawn shops seem to be closed. All I know is that they are very heavy size. Non-metalic (magnet doesn't stick). Possibly even PLATINUM?? LOL.. wishful thinking.

Can anyone help me identify this rusty can they were buried in?

Thanks in advance.
TW

 

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[creskol]

Where are the monkeys that those balls came from?

Nickel or nickel alloy?

 

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[PetesPockets55]

Congratulations on an intriguing find.

IMHO they cannot be zinc as zinc is used as a sacrificial metal and would dissolve before the metal container. (think anode on an outboard or hot water heater)

I'm not sure why someone would go to such lengths for lead or other nonvaluable metals. I wonder if someone put some kind of sealer on the metal balls to avoid tarnishing it. It just seems like any kind of metal (other than gold of course) would show signs of oxidation unless this was a dry area with little moisture.

As far as the other possible metals, I'd like to see the results of an XRF analysis if accurate volume and weight measurements aren't performed.

 

[EQ8]

Piece of thread, vessel for water, digital scale that can handle the weight of the water and vessel.
You Tube how to do a specific gravity test.
*Note that sterling silver will "tarnish" more than pure due to the 7.5% copper content.
Sterling may have a different S.G. than pure silver too.
Charts are easily found on line.
Good Luck! I hope it is pure silver!

 

[A2coins]

Where are the monkeys that those balls came from?

Nickel or nickel alloy?

Im right here and I want them back!!!!!!

 

[GoDeep]

IF those were silver they would be black as night. *** IMO

I've pulled 90% silver coins from the ground that show no corrosion, just about as bright as the day they got buried. Couldn't they be 90% coin silver or the like? And given they are in that Tennis ball container, they may have been buried in the last 50 years or so too so not that old. Based on weight, the only other alternative is Lead. .379 vs. . 410 per CI.

Also, they can't be dangerous radioactive metals like Uranium, they'd weigh nearly twice what they do. (.66 per CI)

 

[Red-Coat]

I have some thoughts.

Hardness

You say “No. Not lead or zinc. It is much too hard to be those metals” which doesn’t make sense if you’re theorising it to be silver. True, lead only has a hardness of 1.5 on the Mohs scale but zinc and silver both have a hardness of 2.5 on the scale. Silver is not a naturally hard material. Depending on the way it has been annealed, the degree to which it has been subsequently worked, and whether it has minor amounts of other metals (as in Sterling silver for example) the hardness might get to 3.0, but not beyond that. Even platinum only has a hardness of 3.5 but remember the Mohs scale is an ordinal scale based on rankings and not an absolute measure of hardness.

For silver, the thing that increases hardness the most is the degree of working after annealing, but cast spheres like that with mould marks still visible cannot have been worked. There are ways to push silver hardness a bit further. For example the “Argentium” process creates a harder silver that meets the Sterling standard by replacing the usual copper content with other metals, but didn’t see commercial use until the 1990s.

It wouldn’t be difficult to check what the actual hardness might be, so I would suggest that you perform some comparative scratching tests to find out.

Tarnish

The lack of tarnish is not consistent with silver in my opinion. Again the Argentium process creates a silver which is not just harder, but also much more tarnish resistant but (as above) would have to date from the 1990s or later. Platinum of course wouldn’t tarnish.

Density

For ease of comparison with published data, I have converted the densities into specific gravities, using your weights and taking the items as perfect spheres (neither of which are likely to be completely ‘kosher’, but nevertheless I think a reasonable approximation for the purposes of guessing what they might be made from). That gives SGs of:

8.38
10.44
9.78
9.69
9.71

By comparison zinc is 7.14, silver is 10.49, lead is 11.34 and platinum is a whopping great 21.45 but if those spheres are made from an alloy, then any comparison with native metal densities only has limited validity.

Personally, I think there are more likely possibilities that are being neglected and one in particular springs to mind:

Milling Balls?

These come in various sizes and made from various materials but larger and heavier ones are typically used for things such as ‘ore-crushing’ where you’re just size-reducing the material to facilitate smelting rather than milling to produce uniformly fine powders or using them for polishing. The latter usually have a very uniform spherical surface, but there’s no need for the heavy duty ones to be so perfectly formed.

The material of choice is often tungsten carbide, which has an SG of around 15.6, a hardness between 9.0 to 9.5 and a greyish metallic colour which doesn’t tarnish. From a combination of size and weight, it’s possible to tailor the balls more specifically to suit the size and density of what is being processed, for which various tungsten alloys are used. Tungsten itself has an SG of 19.45 and a hardness of 7.5 but you can adjust that to other desired values by alloying with other metals, for which iron, nickel, copper and cobalt are commonly used. Some processors prefer at least some iron content so the balls can be recovered from the processed material with an elecctro-magnet, while others simply use a screen for separation. Tungsten itself is not magnetic and whether alloys of it exhibit magnetism depends on what it is alloyed with.

Just a thought.

 

[sprailroad]

Just saw this... so I am late to the party.

IF those were silver they would be black as night. *** IMO

With that said... I would be VERY careful handling them until you know exactly what you are holding.

There are other metals which would resist corrosion / tarnish... one of which would be white gold of course.

Silver is ruled out simple by the lack of tarnish... but something of more value is now in the sights.

Just hoping what you have found is not an element that was put there to "dispose" of due to dangers.

AARC, I cant speak for Florida, but in Oregon, a silver coin comes out of the ground 99% of the time silver, different dirt, different results?

 

[sprailroad]

How odd, if silver i've never seen the like. Seems an strange choice of casting (more tricking than a sand mould) & then problematic transporting.

Unless you transport them in a Tennis ball can I guess.

 

[cudamark]

Just a thought? I wonder what an analysis would look like!

 

[GoDeep]

They can't be Tungsten based on his measurements, Tungsten is a heavy metal and comes in at .695 per cubic inch, which means they'd have to weigh almost twice what he weighed them at.

 

[Simplex]

Great find, hope it is silver. I have pulled silver coins that has been in the ground 100 years and was shiny. Something like that will get the heart to racing. congrats

 

[Red-Coat]

They can't be Tungsten based on his measurements, Tungsten is a heavy metal and comes in at .695 per cubic inch, which means they'd have to weigh almost twice what he weighed them at.

Alloy. Read my last paragraph again. Doesn't have to be pure tungsten, which would in any case be an unlikely and expensive industrial choice.

 

[cudamark]

Great find, hope it is silver. I have pulled silver coins that has been in the ground 100 years and was shiny. Something like that will get the heart to racing. congrats

The OP is about a 1/2 hour north of me, and while it's possible for silver to come out of the ground shiny, it's not likely in our area with normal ground conditions. I can't remember the last time I pulled something silver, that had been in the ground any length of time, that came out shiny. Fresh drops, sure, but, buried long enough for the can to rust away and look that clean?

 

[GoDeep]

Alloy. Read my last paragraph again. Doesn't have to be pure tungsten, which would in any case be an unlikely and expensive industrial choice.

I see that now, thanks. They look homemade to me though, and the average joe would have no way to be making Tungsten Alloys (Tungsten melts at over 6000F).

All things considered they could be some exotic metal, but since they were purposely buried and they look homemade, the odds suggest a common, easily melted, cheaper metal, such as silver or lead.

 

[Red-Coat]

They look homemade to me though, and the average joe would have no way to be making Tungsten Alloys (Tungsten melts at over 6000F).

All things considered they could be some exotic metal, but since they were purposely buried and they look homemade, the odds suggest a common, easily melted, cheaper metal, such as silver or lead.

What I was suggesting is that they are industrially made, but for a crude 'pre-breaking' process that doesn't require them to be particularly uniform or well-finished.

There's a lot of things we could rule out if the OP would be kind enough to perform a simple hardness test against some common materials... rather than just telling us they're "a lot harder [than lead or zinc]".

 

[mcmich]

Every silver coin I have dug is shiny, no air, no tarnish. Rub some bleach on one, if it tarnishes quickly its silver (or so says google)

 

[ARC]

Yeah... here in Florida... NOTHING comes out of the ground like it went in... UNLESS it just went in. heh

Our ground here just starts to "take it back".

Especially the saltier it is.

 

[EQ8]

Lead does come in different hardnesses.
Pure lead is very soft, but adding tin and antimony (I think) in varying amounts makes it harder.
The lead they used to make printing press plates and letter s with is very hard. (Linotype)
So hard that it is used as a mix with softer lead to make good bullets.
Not sure what the hardness number is but could probably find out with a bit of research.

 

[Red-Coat]

Lead does come in different hardnesses.
Pure lead is very soft, but adding tin and antimony (I think) in varying amounts makes it harder.
The lead they used to make printing press plates and letter s with is very hard. (Linotype)
So hard that it is used as a mix with softer lead to make good bullets.
Not sure what the hardness number is but could probably find out with a bit of research.

Yes, of course adding anything to lead will change its properties, and type metal is indeed much harder than lead. In modern times it has always been an alloy. The industry uses the absolute measure of Brinell Hardness numbers (BHN) rather than the Mohs scale. The BHN for lead is about 5 whereas the BHN for type metal ranges between about 12 and 28, with linotype usually around 22 because its only about 84% lead with 12% antimony and 4% tin. It wouldn’t remain tarnish free in the ground for long though. It goes dark grey quite quickly, even in the air.

Again, if the OP would only provide some comparative hardness tests, we might be a lot the wiser.

There still remains the issue of why anyone would make large spherical balls of type metal (notwithstanding any speculation about why they might then be ‘cache-buried’).

 

[Mudflap]

Yeah... here in Florida... NOTHING comes out of the ground like it went in... UNLESS it just went in. heh

Our ground here just starts to "take it back".

Especially the saltier it is.

Your right! Doesn't even have to go into the ground to start decaying!