The Platinum Lightning Rod Story

1985

A True story written 9/10/2012 1,112 Words*

#141 By Howard Yasgar

It was in 1965 when I decided to get into the precious metals refining business.

I discussed it with a friend that had a booth at the Miami Jewelry Exchange.

I knew that I would need a Troy weight balance scale to weigh precious metals with, but I didn’t have a clue as to where to get one.

The only thing I knew was that all precious metals are weighed by Troy weight.

In Troy weight, there are 12 ounces per Troy pound, rather than 16 ounces commonly found in the avoirdupois system.

When weighing less than 1 ounce Troy, which is common in the precious metals business, an ounce is broken down into grains. There are 480 grains in one Troy ounce,

Before digital scales became commonly used, all precious metals were weighed on some type of balance scale, and it took a bit of finessing to learn how to use a balance scale accurately.

When I mentioned to my friend at the Jewelry Exchange that I needed a scale, he said follow me.

We walked across the street to where there was a jeweler’s supply store, and I bought my first scale there for $17.00.

It was a small scale, it had two pans, about three inches in diameter. And the center post of the balance was mounted on a grey wooden box about 10 inches long, 5 inches deep and 4 inches tall. It had a drawer in the front where the weights were kept.

I played with that scale and weights day and night until I was able to accurately weigh the smallest item.

What is more interesting is, once I learned how to use it, I became fascinated with balance scales, and I started collecting them.

Also, I started reading up on balance scales, and I found that they have been used for centuries, they

Were used for weighing gold, coins, for weighing diamonds, and even chemicals.

Some bigger balance scales are used for weighing food, and even for weighing jockeys at the racetrack.

As I traveled, I would stop at antique stores and I would look for balance scales.

      One evening in 1982, my fiancée Katherine asked me what my sign of the zodiac was, but I didn’t have a clue of what she was talking about.

She said that my birthday was on September 27, and that made me a Libra, and believe it or not the sign of a Libra is the balance scale.

     So, after that, whenever Katherine and I were on a road trip, we stopped at every antique and junk store that we saw, looking for balance scales.

One day in 1984, were driving on the Palmetto expressway heading towards Fort Lauderdale.

I noticed several antique stores on the opposite side of the expressway.

So, on our return trip, we made it our business to stop and see if any of them had any balance scales.

Well, we struck pay dirt, because in the second store we found a very nice pharmacy balance scale with a marble top and it had big wide brass weighing pans.

      The antique store owner had it priced at $150.00, but we ended up paying him $100.00.

As I pushed the scale on a cart up to the front counter, and the store owner asked me, “Are you a scale collector?”  

I told him that I had started collecting scales because I was in the platinum business.

The store owner then asked, “How much is platinum worth”.

I don’t recall the price at the time but it was probably $300.00 to $400.00 an ounce.

He said, “I have a friend that had recently made a lot of money by selling platinum”.

I was curious, so I asked him how his friend had done it?

He said, “My friend is also an antique dealer just like me, but he specializes in lighthouses”.

He said, “One day in 1965 his friend was sitting in the Library of Congress doing research on old lighthouses”.        

     He said. “Light houses were always an interesting subject for antique dealers, as there are many people that collect just about anything to do with them”.

He also said, “People just loved light houses, because their history goes back to the original colonies”.

     “When America was first colonized, ships coming to the colonies from Europe often hit rocks on the U.S. coastline and they sank”.

  The dealer said that while his friend was studying the blueprints of the light houses in the Library of Congress, he noticed that they all had platinum lightning rods.

“He knew that at the time, platinum was worth about $400.00 per ounce. So his friend became very excited, and he made a list of all the light houses on the east coast that the government had used platinum lightning rods on”.

“He also found that in 1959 the government had started hiring contractors to renovate the light houses,

so, he went to the first light house on the list, which was in in Maine”.

“His intention was to steal the platinum lightning rods and sell them, but he was too late”.

“The contractor had already removed it and replaced it with a copper lightening rod”.

“The antique dealer panicked and over the next few weeks he drove to every single lighthouse along the East Coast of the United States. But he found that the contractor had beaten him to the punch and already replaced the platinum lightning rods with copper on every single one”.

“Eventually by 1965 he found one lighthouse in upstate Florida that had not been renovated”.

“So, in the evening, he broke the door lock, climbed up the steps, and removed an eighteen-pound solid platinum lightening rod”.

“For a while he kept the platinum lightening rod, which had over the years been painted many times, in his living room and that’s where the antique dealer telling me the story had seen it”.

Now if that rod weighed eighteen lbs. that meant it was worth over $100,000.00 in scrap.

  Back in 1965 there was no internet or Google, so discovering that pure platinum was used for lightning rods was quite a stroke of luck on the part of that antique dealer.

There is the Statue of Freedom” atop the Capitol building for one, and there is also the Washington monument, and both are located in Washington DC.

    There are probably many more platinum lightning rods all over America, just waiting to be removed by someone and sold for scrap.