Hi everyone. Today we're speaking to Backyard Bullion and learning a bit
more about their hand poured silver bars
and to learn a bit more about the business as well.
Thank you for having me here Caroline
It's a pleasure to be in this lovely Devonshire countryside
with this lovely view.
It's a shame you guys can't see the view from this angle, but I'm sure
we'll put some shots up as well, because it's really special.
- So I'm interested to find out bit more about why you do what you do?
Oh, why I do what I do?
That's a very big question, how long have you got?
I do what I do because I love what I do, I guess that's the easiest answer.
I never thought I'd be a hand poured silver producer, but here I am and that's come
about by happenstance, from having a bit of a midlife crisis and a career crisis
as it were and changing what I wanted to do, found this as a hobby, and it's taken off
into a business which I love. I have a passion for it and I just want to keep
on growing it, keep on developing it, and developing my skills and developing what I'm doing with it.
I love doing that and that's so creative, such a great output for me.
It makes me happy and I think that's one of the most important things for anybody
if anyone asks you a question of why you do what you do
'be happy' - that's what I say, that's what I do and that's what I live by as well.
So I hope that answers your question. - But why silver?
As I said, it was a happenstance to get into this whole hand poured silver game.
I was made a godparent and traditionally godparents and more around
helping religious upbringings, but I'm not a particularly religious person
but I felt that being a godparent I could impart some
knowledge and experience about things I like and I loved coins.
Ever since I was a small boy, I love coins so I looked on The Royal Mint's website to get
some nice, commemorative coins as a christening gift and
and then I got hooked on silver and I saw all of these different coin review videos and
eventually stumbled across hand poured silver and I just thought to myself
give it a go! So, why silver? A bit of luck.
Maybe one day we'll pour some gold, but for now, the white shiny stuff is where I want to be.
- Can you tell us about the process of making these bars, and talk about some of the imperfections
or what we see as imperfections. - Yeah so silver is a very versatile metal
which is really one of its main strengths, its one of the reasons why it's use so heavily in industry
because it is so versatile. It's one of the best conductors of heat and energy out there
and relative to gold, it has of course, got a much better price point.
One of the best features I find about silver, and especially with pure silver
like these bars which are .999 silver which is the most common
like these cast bars here as well, is that it flows so well.
It's almost like water when you pour it out in the molten form, it just it fills a mould really quickly and easily.
It's very manipulative, you can manipulate it very easily.
and can make these ripples so, like you see here on these bars we've created
these ripples as the silvers cooled. It's really just as simple as that.
You pour this over into a mould, it takes the shape of whatever mould you want
I use a furnace which is just a tabletop furnace at home
you know they are not very expensive
in the grand scheme of things, and you can pour in your own kitchen like I do.
I have literally started this as a kitchen table business
well actually, originally it was in the backyard, hence the name Backyard Bullion.
But we fast grew out of space and practicality in the back garden so
we now operate from the kitchen. So yeah you just get the silver,
you get a furnace, you melt it all down, you put it in in a mould and hey presto!
You have some bars! There's a whole host of other things
that go of course into into making these kind of things but that's it in a nutshell really.
- What are your favourite pieces?
I'm very partial to just bars.
I know a lot of people out there maybe feel that bars
are just a bit dull because they're bars but you know, big bars like this
I absolutely adore.
I love making as bigger pieces I can make for my own hand poured silver.
The bars that we've created for you of course, are just 2 ounces.
So they're not particularly big, but one day,
I hope to be able to be making nice Backyard Bullion kilo bars.
You can see on some of these bars that there are some very fine ripple lines
as the silver has cooled here.
If you can just imagine one of these bars with the sort of big
deep ripple lines that you see here just in my opinion it would be really, really cool
so that's something I want to try and get to at some point.
Maybe we're a way off that just in the kitchen right now it's maybe a bit too dangerous but we'll see.
- Your brand you've got certain standards that you adhere to don't you?
Yes, so hand poured silver, at the end of the day, is just a silver bar.
You know, silver can come in so many different forms.
we've got here some coins, that you've kindly had for us to look at on the table and these big cast bars.
It takes so many different forms but the brand, I think
is what sets a bar apart from another bar and one thing that we've always done
and I say 'we' because, it's not just me, there's a Mrs Backyard Bullion as well
behind the scenes, she does everything to help like she really does.
I can't thank her enough for all of the energy and effort that she does
because that brand is so strong now. We've been going two years and it's what sets us apart
I think from just you know another person who maybe just goes and gets a
furnace and then tries to sell some silver bars, you know, people are now
buying Backyard Bullion stuff because it's part of the brand
and not just because it's a pretty-looking bar. Which is quite humbling, at the same time
is quite exciting for me as a producer. I really do think it's quite amazing that
I can just pour some silver and that people are willing to pay for that
and to recognize the labor, and time that goes into each and every piece.
- Some new bars have got hallmarks and they're made to specific weights.
Yes, so the hallmarking is again another thing, which has really helped our brand
this last eighteen months / two years that we've been going and incorporating them
So the hallmark is that stamp of quality.
It's that stamp of authenticity to make sure that it's real
that it's got that, you know, purity grade that is as required.
That's really important for us, it's not just a piece of silver, it's an art piece and
all of my silver really is just I bill it as 'art bars'.
A lot time and energy goes into each one of these bars and you mentioned quality in an earlier question
All of these represent maybe about half of what was actually made to make these.
Pouring them to an exact weight is not very easy in the method I use
because I I don't pour an exact weight of two ounces so whilst these are all stamped
that's the minimum weight. Some of them might be 2.1 [ounces]
I think even one of them might be 2.2 ounces.
I let one go through because it was a very pretty bar but I want to make sure that they look good
as good as possible because when people pay for something and they pay a
premium for something, I'm a firm believer that it needs to be as good as
it possibly can be, to have a good buying experience.
We take great pride in that and we try and make sure that anything and everything we make
is at that highest quality that it can be.
- How long have you been interested in precious metals?
Well, I've been collecting coins ever since I was about four years old.
I remember my grandfather, he would always just give me coins.
He travelled the world so many times, he was a huge, huge traveller and he'd lived abroad in the
1950s and 60s in Singapore and he had all of these old coins and banknotes and
everything and I remember rummaging through them as a child and really
enjoying those, and not that I knew it at the time, but he gave me my first ever
piece of silver which was a an American silver half-dollar.
It was a 1944 coin and I never really thought much more of it and then when I got older
and I sort of, I always had this big box of old coins that followed me everywhere.
I took it with me when I went to university and it just sat on my desk
and it was nice to rummage through the coins.
It was only then, when I really started looking at them going, well what is each coin?
Then you realize "Oh, that one's actually made of silver, that's interesting."
and then I started collecting a few other more older coins like old crowns
and shillings and things like that as well, rather than just more modern bullion
but then, as I said, I kind of got into the world of bullying through discovering
it on The Royal Mint's website when I was made a godfather and
looking for a nice gift. Silver really does make an excellent gift, you have to admit.
- So what about the precious metal aspect and investments and that whole side of things?
Yes it got me hooked, really quickly
It was quite scary I guess, in a way, how quickly sometimes
you get hooked on these things. On my Youtube channel
I have always tried to give an air of caution to anybody who wants to get into precious metals.
I'm a firm believer that, if you are fortunate enough to be able to buy precious metals,
that you should do so responsibly. I don't think that there's a place for it
being a sole part of any investment portfolio, so for me Mrs Backyard Bullion
when we got into this world, and we got hooked, the first
silver delivery we took we couldn't stop looking at them and playing
with the coins. They were just so amazing. We knew that we wanted to try and get a
little bit more and our strategy kind of evolved because originally it was
we'll buy some silver coins, when the silver price goes up, we'll sell them
we'll make a bit of money. But we fast realized that it's not really about that.
It was more about that preservation of wealth for the future and locking up some of
that fund that we had available for saving now, so that we could have that as
a nest egg for later in life maybe down the line in retirement or if we had kids
in need university funds and things like that, it's just a way of being able to
preserve that money now and that's that's kind of how I view silver.
Obviously I've got my own side of the business, where I buy and sell silver on
a regular basis which is I guess a bit counterintuitive.
- Its two seperate things really. I think as a silver investor,
silver is (even more so than gold) both metals are really long-term investments.
Its also a hedge against other things going wrong in the world.
- Yes totally. I'm not a believer in sort of prepping and being that
"You need to have gold and silver for an eventual collapse" so to speak
but at the same time, you are protected from it so this is a happy bonus.
It would be a very sad state of affairs if that to pass and economies completely collapsed
so it's not something I ever want to happen but it's added hedge and bonus,
which I guess is something that people will consider, but its not at the top of my mind.
I also like shiny things, if you haven't guessed, so there's a lot of satisfaction
that you get from having a kilo bar or having a nice gold coin.
It's tangible, you can feel it, and hold it, and see it, and enjoy it.
which I'm sure you're very familiar with being a dealer,
seeing all of this pass through your vaults must be quite, quite fun.
- Where would you like to see your business going?
Oh, it's a difficult one, because we are so busy at the moment.
As you know, when we were talking about making these bars
the scope I had to make a certain quantity was quite limited, so I never want to lose sight of
what this started out as, as an enjoyable hobby, and why I started doing this
because I was unhappy with my career choices and what I was doing with my job beforehand
so if this ever got to a stage where I'm thinking to myself
"I don't like this, or I'm not enjoying it anymore," I think that's something I don't want to have.
This is not a "I'm gonna make a million pound business out of this."
This is not a "I want to be the next MK Barz, or global producer of silver."
I just like making things that's very creative, it's cathartic, it's fun
and if I can make a small living out of it, I get all of the added
benefits of being able to be self-employed, working from home,
working with my hands, being creative, enjoying time with the dogs, enjoying time with Mrs Backyard Bullion
and just generally enjoying life more than I did
when I was working in an office. That's what I want out of this.
Where do I see this going? I see it growing to a point where we can be sustainable for
a long-term, and that's the goal. So not really bothered about growing it stupidly huge.
I think it would lose some of it's 'specialness' if that happened.
- Have you got any advice for silver stackers?
Advice for silver stackers?
I don't like giving advice, in terms of "you should buy a
certain amount of silver each year, or month, or anything." I've always said it
should be down to each and every individual circumstance.
The only thing I have always said on my channel is "buy what you like and like what you buy."
If you're not interested in something there's always something else to look for
you know, if it's hand poured silver, if it's special numismatics, if it's coloured coins or bars.
There's something for everybody.
My only advice to you is to enjoy it and if you buy something a lock away
in a safe for 30 years and don't think about it, it just works for some people,
but for me, I like to enjoy what I buy I have have certain things like 'Flavour of the Month'
out on my desk and, you know, if it's a big kilo bar of silver
I'll have that out there as a paperweight and I'll enjoy it.
- So would it be true to say that you
you'd like to make pieces that people are going to put on display
and not lock away? - Yeah I like to make pieces like that
and that's one of the great things about hand poured silver
because, this you can pick up, you can feel with your hand
you can rub it with your hands and you can just get it dirty with fingerprints
and just clean it with a cloth and its perfectly fine.
With a Oriental Border Britannia, if I crack this out of the capsule now and did that
You'd cringe at me, and cry at me, and all the people watching this video would do the same
So you can enjoy this, and that's what we want to do
with the Backyard Bullion brand. A lot of you out there who've seen some of
my other products, where we've got the frames made by my dad. You know, playing
Tetris games with that, or playing the sliding puzzle games and things.
It's tactile, it's something that you can enjoy and have out on the
table and get, and that's really important to us.
We want to bring people a bit of pleasure when they purchase something
not just another piece to put in the safe.
- Yes. I'm just going to do a close-up on this bar here
this is something you've produced for us
so that we can help The Barn Owl Trust. For every one of these bars that we sell
The Barn Owl Trust will get at least £5
so we're putting that into into the price and there'll be added,
there'll be extra bits that you can buy with that, like 'adopt a barn owl'.
We're just trying to raise as much money for them as we can.
- Yeah it's a very interesting cause and especially poignant because you guys have got barn owls
on your property here where we're filming. Love them, they're absolutely awesome creatures, aren't they?
And this design is really good. I really like the way
that it's sat within the ripples so it was really good to make and stamp.
It was actually quite easy to stamp as well. Some of the stamps that we've had designed in the past
are quite tricky because of their flat surfaces but this I think
looks really good, so you guys have done a cracking job designing that.
- We'd like to do more of this kind of thing and possibly again also raising money for
this charity or other charities locally because I think the big
charities tend to get to lots of press and it's easy for you to raise money for
Cancer Research or British Heart Foundation, but these smaller
charities I think often get left behind. - Well hopefully we can do
some more of these in 2019. As we said, this was so the trial run as-it-were
so I hope people enjoy them and and pick them up and support both you guys, myself
and The Barn Owl Trust. It would be a really good thing to be able
to make more of them in the future.
- Well thank you very much for coming here today
and delivering these wonderful pieces. We're very excited to find out how our
customers are going to think of them.
- Indeed, hopefully they will.
If they want to see any of them being made, we've got a 'making of' video as well.
So they can see it actually being poured and some of them being stamped as well
and see the whole end-to-end process. - I think it's all really very special.
Again its part of the part of the brand. Each one is is handmade, each one takes
a lot of energy and effort to make and it's important to remember that.
It's only right that you guys should be able to see how how they're made
I'm quite happy to share that and share the results.
I think they look pretty good. In fact, I think they look really good.
We were very happy actually when we when we first got them out and the stamp made on
them, and antiqued it (made it blackened). It really stood out and that made the design
really leap off the bar which is the best thing about it, I think.
I just like to say a massive thank you for the opportunity to make these for you guys
and I hope it goes well for you guys and The Barn Owl Trust.
And thank you for having me down here today, it's been a really interesting experience
seeing how you guys operate and just understanding
what's behind the business and that's really, very special and cool so thank you.
- Thank you. If you liked our video, please make sure that
you give us a big thumbs up. Thank you.
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