From the ground all the way to your safe, A Silver Journey

Hello everybody!I’m a silver nugget. I live deep in the ground with my cousins; gold, copper, and zinc.

Thanks to the help of miners who work long hours underground in hot, wet, dark conditions. With explosives and man power they can extracted me from the earth and I can be brought to the surface. Where they load me up in rail cars to be sent to the refinery for my next step in becoming a coin. Photo by silverminers.com

When I arrive at the refinery they load me up into
a giant furnace that exceeds 2,000 degrees. Some of the smelting pots can hold a gallon of liquid silver! and you have to be extremely careful because they’re big and they’re hot!

This is the mother of all diets, I go through an extruding process where I’m made into a long, flat, and thin looking bar. I can then go onto my next stage of the coin making process where a machine punches out perfect circles and turns me into silver blanksphoto by goldencoins.com

Now is the fun part. As of now I’m a blank slate, just a shiny silver round. And thanks to the help of artists putting their ideas on a computer or by carving them out of clay. They can design the obverse and reverse how they see fit. Their vision is carved into dies for a press to stamp or engrave a design onto me. an up close look

Finally, I have arrived at my final destination. It was a long journey filled with excitement and adventure. But when it’s all said and done we have taken a raw piece of earth metal and transformed it into this sexy beast you see right before your eyes!!

I hope you enjoyed the story of a silver nugget and his quest to become the coolest round in the history of silver rounds.