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The E-Sylum:  Volume 4, Number 46, November 11, 2001, Article 3

CENTRAL AMERICA BAR SETS PRICE RECORD    

  From an Associated Press article filed the evening of   
  November 8th:    

  NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. (AP)-- The largest known gold   
  bar from the California Gold Rush -- a bread loaf-sized brick   
  named Eureka -- has been sold for a record $8 million, officials   
  said Thursday.    

  The ingot was bought by a collector described only as a "Forbes   
  400 business executive,'' said Michael Carabini, president of   
  Monaco Financial, the Orange County-based rare coin company   
  that handled the sale.    

  The sale nearly doubled the record set previously for the sale   
  of collectible money. In 1999, a single silver dollar sold for   
  more than $4 million, said Donn Pearlman of the Professional   
  Numismatists Guild.    

  "They sold the artifact that was THE piece of numismatic   
  history of the California Gold Rush,'' he said.    

  The bar was handmade in 1857 by California assayers John   
  Kellogg and Augustus Humbert.  Weighing nearly 80 pounds   
  troy, the bar was stamped with its 1857 value -- $17,433.57.    

  On Sept. 3, 1857, the bar was loaded onto the SS Central   
  America in San Francisco.  The "Ship of Gold'' was bound 
  for New York where the gold was to be turned into coins.    

  Eight days later, the ship was damaged in a hurricane and   
  sank Sept. 12 more than 140 miles east of Cape Hatteras,   
  N.C., in 8,000 feet of water. More than 400 people died.    

  The lost riches helped spark an economic depression that   
  lasted three years."    

  [You'd be depressed too, if you lost that much gold.   
  Actually, the bar was loaded onto a different ship for the   
  Pacific leg of the trip from San Francisco.  It traveled   
  across the ithsmus of Panama by train before being loaded   
  onto the S.S. Central America on the Atlantic side.  And if   
  the gold were destined to be turned into coins, that would   
  have happened in Philadelphia, not New York, which had   
  no mint.  The popular press could use a numismatic    
  fact-checker.    -Editor]    

  See the San Francisco Chronicle article about the ingot:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/01/12/MN177895.DTL

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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