Ni-Sanak-Tani Bullion Mystery
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Kenneth Mills recently sent me this image of a bullion purportedly from Ni-Sanak-Tani 381. He was puzzled as it neither matched the description for this lodge’s B1 nor was on my site. I looked at my own collection and found it there too.
I guess I just never paid too much attention to it, 381 not being a difficult lodge to collect. My copy of this mystery piece has been in my collection for several years now.
The patch listed as B1 in the Blue Book for this lodge is described as having a red lodge name. There are also several other significant differences from the mystery bullion at the top of this post. The 381 B1, as listed, is pictured on my site but I do not know who sent the image.
Upon further recollection, I seem to remember asking folks about this before and being told there was just one bullion issued. I recollect no answer to what the piece I have is.
To further complicate matters, within the past year or so a third bullion has surfaced. I felt confident in labelling this one “ZB1″, pending a final decision by the Blue Book editor for this lodge. Some day I’ll replace this image with a better one of the actual piece now in my collection. Note the similarities between the mystery piece and the “ZB1″.
I have seen the mystery bullion around. I don’t believe it to be especially rare. That’s why I never really gave it much thought until now.
Is there anyone out there who knows about these pieces, most probably from Minnesota or Wisconsin? What are they? Were there really two bullions issues by the lodge in 1997? Is the mystery piece some sort of prototype or private issue? Perhaps the B1 listed in Blue Book is the rare piece and a prototype or private issue itself?
If you can help please post your comments below.
There’s definitely some confusion here… The thing is, unless you can see something I don’t, the image you show with the red name doesn’t look like a bullion–I don’t see any metal thread on it at all. And the listing for the X5 (for which the site has no image) seems to have the same data as for the B1. And the B1 listing claims 50th is in SMY, but one doesn’t often see SMY on a bullion.
Is it possible that there are multiple listing errors involved, and that for its 50th Anniversary NST 381 issued two double-canoe shaped patches, one of which was the bullion with the metallic “50th Anniversary” shown in the first picture, and the other of which was an X issue with the red lodge name shown in the second picture?
I consider this one solved. I believe Dave has it correct and I should have seen this. Occum’s Razor applies here.
The B1 description is in error and the image there is the X5, not B1. The correct image of the B1 has now been put on the blog even though Blue Book is wrong on this issue.