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Sale 128
Lot 764
Justh & Hunter 51.78 oz 889 Fine $951.57 Gold Bar #4307. This is one of the incredible gold bar recovered from the 1857 shipwreck of the S. S. Central America, apparently a more recent find on one of the return trips to scour the ocean floor for additional gold and artifacts it's in the new book Americas Greatest Treasure Ship: The Second Treasure Finding Journey. Justh & Hunter were partners and two of the more reliable and well known smelters and refiners in the gold rush region in California. They cast gold bars with their proper weight and assay stamped on the bars with their well known names from the early days of the gold rush. Located in both Marysville and San Francisco, the Justh & Hunter "brand" was well recognized and brought full value when encountered.
Most of the gold recovered from the gold fields was in the form of gold dust, difficult to assay and of varying purity and quality depending on a number of factors. Hence, the miners involved in its recovery had to get their gold assayed and melted into a recognizable form. There were not a lot of assayers in the area of the gold fields, but they provided a welcome service to the miners who could otherwise be taken for a very large percentage by the unscrupulous when selling or battering with their gold dust. Once gold dust had been melted and cast into bar form like this, a corner could be cut off the bar, assayed, then the exact fineness and weight could be determined, and value of course, leaving no question as to the value of a gold bar, but a canvass bag with a like quantity of dust had no easily determined value without known purity of the dust.
Prior to the recovery of these incredible gold bars from the SS Central America, such bars were known in theory only. Incredibly, there were dozens of these gold bars strewn about the ocean floor after the catastrophic sinking of the SS. Central America in September of 1857 in a hurricane hundreds of miles off the coast of North Carolina. The news of the loss of the ship, its golden cargo, and many lives caused a financial panic in New York. Today these recovered relics are historic treasures from the height of the Gold Rush, and fantastic reminders of those heady days when "strike it rich" was a common reality. Holding this lovely and hefty gold bar brings history home in a very special way, having traveled from the valleys and streams of California, to the narrow coast of Panama via the Pacific Ocean, onto the sidewheeler steamship S.S. Central America in the Atlantic Ocean, only to fail after weeks of travel well short of their east coast destination. Estimated Value $150,000 - 200,000
Ex Ship of Gold Treasure.
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| Realized $180,000 |
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