In the largest known transaction for a single numismatic item, a private collector is reported to have paid $8 million for an 80-pound pioneer gold assay bar retrieved from the 1857 shipwreck SS Central America.
Michael Carabini, president of Monaco Financial LLC - a rare coin dealer and a member of the Monex family of companies in Newport Beach, Calif. - announced Nov. 7 the company had placed the assay bar with an anonymous buyer identified only as a "Forbes 400 business executive." An offer of $7.5 million for the ingot from another investor was turned down in January 2000.
The Forbes listing identifies the 400 richest people in the United States, with the net worth at the bottom of the list at $600 million. Microsoft founder and chairman William H. Gates III, with a net worth of $54 billion, is at the top of the Forbes list.
Fabricated by the San Francisco assaying firm Kellogg & Humbert, the item dubbed the "Eureka" gold bar is the largest of the more than 400 assay bars from five different Gold Rush assayers in California salvaged in the late 1980s from the sunken vessel 160 miles off the coast of Cape Hatteras, N.C.
"It's gone into the possession of somebody who's a very private person," said Larry Goldberg, one of the principals in the California Gold Marketing Group. That group of coin dealers and investors purchased and marketed more than 90 percent of the gold bars, nuggets, gold dust, pioneer gold coins and U.S. gold coins recovered from the SS Central America wreck site. "Historically, it's a very, very important piece. The guy really appreciates owning it. No museum has anything like it."
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OBLIQUE VIEW of the "Eureka bar," shows how thick this nearly 80-pound bar of gold from the California Gold Rush era really is. It set a numismatic record when it sold for a reported $8 million to an unidentified buyer. According to sources, the new owner is among the Forbes 400 listing of the wealthiest individuals in the country.
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Goldberg said the collector also has an undisclosed number of coins among his holdings.
The Eureka bar was the centerpiece of a touring $20 million "Ship of Gold" exhibition at several Long Beach Coin & Collectibles Expos in California, other coin conventions, at the 2000 California State Fair and museums in a half-dozen other cities. The glittering display, housed in a 50-foot long replica of the SS Central America's hull, featured dozens of smaller bars and gold coins recovered from the treasure ship.
Large bar
The bar measures approximately 2.5 inches by 4.5 inches and 10 inches high. It is stamped with the serial number 1003, weighs 933.94 ounces, has a .903 fineness and is stamped with a face value of $17,433.57.
"Kellogg & Humbert assayed the gold and stamped the bar's face with its 1857 value: $17,433.57," said Adam Crum, vice president of numismatics at Monaco Financial and editor of The Coin Market Insider newsletter.
"Gold was priced at $20.67 an ounce back then, and that much gold probably would have taken a half dozen miners more than a year to find," he said.
Today's value is more than $250,000 just for the gold content.
The fineness of the gold bars in the overall SS Central America treasure ranges from the low .600 fine to more than .900 fine, with pieces stamped by Blake & Co. in Sacramento being of the lowest fineness because of the high concentration of the silver in the gold mined.
After 130 years at a depth of nearly 8,000 feet in the Atlantic Ocean, the Eureka ingot and more than 5,000 pioneer gold coins, U.S. gold coins, smaller gold bars, nuggets and dust were recovered by a scientific expedition in the late 1980s. The gold remained locked in vaults for more than a decade until an ownership dispute was resolved in the federal courts.
The California Gold Marketing Group acquired the lion's share of the treasure - some 92.8 percent awarded by a federal judge in Virginia, from the salvors, Columbus-America Discovery Group - in December 1999.
The remaining 7.6 percent awarded to the insurers (or their successors) of the SS Central America and its cargo was sold in June 2000 by Sotheby's.
Since December 1999, the California Gold Marketing Group has sold more than 5,000 gold coins, primarily Uncirculated 1857-S Coronet $20 double eagles, along with pioneer gold coins, other U.S. gold coins of different dates and denominations, and gold bars from five different Gold Rush period assayers.
The treasure has been marketed directly to the public and through a series of authorized distributors.
"Most all of the gold coins and gold bars have now been sold to eager collectors over the past two years," Crum said. "What remains are several of the larger, 'world-class' gold ingots.
Thirteen Gold Rush era "bricks" weighing 500 troy ounces or more are known to exist today. Eight of them now are in private collections, with the remaining five available for acquisition.
All were recovered from the SS Central America that sank about 160 miles from Cape Hatteras on Sept. 12, 1857. A total of 426 passengers and crew of the 578 persons aboard drowned. The rest were rescued by passing ships.
The side-wheel steamship was bound for New York City after being loaded in Panama with cargo and passengers. The gold and passengers had traveled overland from their initial voyage originating from San Francisco aboard the steamship Sonora. The Central America was unable to weather a hurricane off the Carolina coast and sank the day after its boilers failed on Sept. 11.
Three tons of Gold Rush coins and gold bars were also lost.
"In the early days of the California Gold Rush, private mints and assay offices like Kellogg & Humbert would accept gold dust and nuggets from successful '49ers, then process and cast the gold into ingots with the purity of the gold and dollar value individually stamped on them," Carabini said. "These gold bars were used to fuel the rapidly growing pre-Civil War American economy and facilitated large domestic and international transactions."
