Johnson Matthey

Johnson Matthey was founded by Percival Norton Johnson in the early 1817s and served as the top gold assayer in London. No more than 40 years after Norton founded his business, George Matthey became a partner and the company was renamed Johnson & Matthey. Only a few months after Matthey joined forces with Johnson, their new company became the official gold assayer for the Bank of England. It was at this point that Johnson & Matthey branched out and built facilities elsewhere across England in order to handle their growing customer base.

About 100 years later, Johnson Matthey expanded their business into the field of banking and began making high-risk, potentially high reward, loans. This was a successful venture and by the 1980s the Johnson Matthey Bankers subsidiary was the main loaner of money to a handful of high-profile clients.

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Johnson Matthey was one of the world’s top producers of silver and platinum. Though much of the metal they produced went on to be purchased by investors, Johnson Matthey also provided the industrial world with large amount of silver and platinum to be put to use in heavy machinery and other equipment. In fact, Johnson Matthey created the first catalysts to control vehicle pollution in the mid-1970s; a crowning achievement for the company.

Since the 1970s, Johnson Matthey’s presence in the auto industry has expanded dramatically and has helped reduce the emissions stemming from vehicles and heavy machinery by large margins. Despite their business changing faces many times since it was founded, Johnson Matthey has not strayed too far away from their production of platinum and silver bars for investment purposes. Today, Johnson Matthey is one of the most trusted names in the precious metals industry, exemplified perfectly by the massive annual demand for their bullion. In addition to gold, silver, and platinum, Johnson Matthey also processes palladium and the insoluble, difficult to separate rhodium, iridium and ruthenium.

Johnson Matthey is most well known for its production of a wide array of silver bars across a broad spectrum of sizes and weights. Their silver bars come in one of two varieties; pressed or poured. Pressed silver bars have edges and features that are more exact due to the fact that they were created by a mold that precisely stamps out each and every bar. Poured bars, on the other hand, look a bit rougher due to the fact that they were created by pouring molten silver into a mold. Larger JM bars are typically made of poured silver while smaller sizes are pressed. Periodically, JM has also produced rounds. The rounds were minted with .999 Fine Silver.

Johnson Matthey Products

     • Set of 1 Oz Freedom rounds
     • 1985 Liberty Trade round
     • Miscellaneous other dated and undated rounds including fractionals