The Platinum Lightning Rod Story
1985
A True story written 9/10/2012 Re-written 2016
Howard Yasgar
In 1965 when I first 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.
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 that we commonly use.
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 jewelers 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 it’s 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, for weighing coins, for weighing diamonds, and even chemicals.
Some bigger balance scales are used for weighing food, and even for weighing jockeys.
As I traveled, I would stop in 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.
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 my wife and I were on a road trip, we stopped at every antique and junk store that we saw, we were looking for balance scales.
One day in 1984 we were driving on the Palmetto expressway heading towards Fort Lauderdale.
I noticed several antique stores on the opposite side of the expressway.
On our return trip, we made it our business to stop and see if any of them had any antique 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 proceeded to push it on a cart up to the front counter, the stores 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 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. “Lighthouses 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 lighthouses, 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 lighthouses in the Library of Congress, he noticed that they all had the 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 lighthouses 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 lighthouse on the list, which was in in Maine”.
“His intention was to steal the platinum lightening rods and sell them, but he was too late”.
“The contractor had already removed it and replaced it with a copper lightning 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 lightning rod”.
“For awhile he kept the platinum lightning 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.
I recently read on the internet that there are many government statues, as well as monuments and buildings that still might have their original platinum lightning rods on them.
There is the Statue of Freedom” atop the Capitol building for one, and there is also the Washington monument, and both 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.
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