Sold Out: S.S. Central America Treasure Dispersed
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Treasure Created New Collector's Market
(Newport Beach, CA) - The record-setting treasure from the S.S. Central
America, the fabled "Ship of Gold," is virtually sold out. Only a handful of
items remain from an unprecedented treasure that amounted to a numismatic
time capsule of the California Gold Rush.
Of the 7,500 gold coins and 485 assayers' ingots originally made
available by the California Gold Marketing Group of Newport Beach,
California, only a little more than two dozen gold bars remain in the vault.
Everything else has been dispersed, according to Dwight Manley, Managing
Partner of the group.
The coins and ingots first began entering the marketplace in February
2000, and have been sold to private collectors through authorized dealers
and an auction conducted by Christie's. Blanchard and Company of New Orleans
will offer for sale in January the small quantity of remaining items still
held by California Gold Marketing Group, including a few Kellogg $50 slug
commemorative gold pieces struck in 2001.
"This has been the ultimate numismatic experience," said Manley who
conducted 18 months of complex negotiations to acquire the bulk of the
treasure intact, then spearheaded a three-year educational and marketing
program to sell it.
"I feel blessed to have been a part of the team that handled the
treasure,and working with numismatic legends like Dave Bowers, John Ford and
Eric Newman. At times, I was speechless."
The Central America was carrying tons of California Gold Rush coins and
gold bars when it sank in the Atlantic Ocean during a hurricane in September
1857. The Columbus-America Discovery Group of Columbus, Ohio located and
recovered tons of cargo in the late 1980s.
In the largest numismatic transaction in history, California Gold
Marketing Group acquired intact $100+ million worth of the famous treasure
from Columbus-America in December 1999.
A traveling $20 million "Ship of Gold" exhibit created by Manley's group
was seen by more than a million people over a two year period. Stories about
the treasure were featured on The Today Show, CNBC, the CBS Evening News,
and in The Wall Street Journal, as well as in overseas publications and
television programs from Japan to Germany.
California Gold Marketing Group donated five recovered gold coins to
museums and historical societies: American Numismatic Association Money
Museum; California Historical Society; Durham Western Heritage Museum; New
York Historical Society; and San Francisco Historical Society.
Two educational projects about California Gold Rush era money - a new
television documentary and A California Gold Rush History, a 1,056-page,
award-winning reference book written by noted numismatic author, Q. David
Bowers - were created and funded with proceeds from the sales of Central
America treasure. Narrated by distinguished Oscar-winning actor, Charlton
Heston, the one-hour television program, "Gold Rush Money," is the pilot for
a proposed 22-episode program about the history of money
"Seeing the treasure in person turned adults into little kids. It
generated a lot of excitement. People would press their noses against the
display windows. At coin shows, collectors and dealers would come back to
see the exhibit time after time," said Manley.
"This was the great adventure of my life," exclaimed Bowers, a partner in
the California Gold Marketing Group. "The Central America paid for the
extensive research and printing of the Gold Rush history book and the grand
'Ship of Gold' exhibit. Working with Dwight and with the treasure's
discoverers, Tommy Thompson and Bob Evans, was very enjoyable and will be
remembered by me forever."
Thompson assembled the 1980s science mission that discovered and
retrieved the sunken treasure. Evans has spent 14 years with the treasure,
from retrieval to dispersal. He was the chief scientist and historian on the
discovery mission and has served as the treasure's curator the past three
years.
"I'm thrilled the treasure was enthusiastically received by the
collecting public. It is very gratifying that the treasure I helped find and
care for now is in the hands of thousands of happy owners," said Evans.
Manley summed up the treasure transactions: "We sold more than 7,500 gold
coins with dates ranging from 1825 to 1857. That figure includes over 300
territorial pieces. There also were 485 assayers' ingots produced by five
different assayers, ranging in size from 5.8 ounces to 933.94 ounces each.
Only about two dozen gold bars remain," Manley revealed.
The largest ingot, named "Eureka," was sold in November 2001 to a "Forbes
400" business executive for $8 million, the most money ever paid for a
single numismatic item.
"Eureka was the astounding piece d' resistance, of the Central America
treasure, the largest surviving California Gold Rush ingot. It was a focal
point of our traveling 'Ship of Gold' exhibition," said Manley.
Blanchard and Company President, Christopher Holton, said the treasure
appealed to many people.
"The Central America treasure opened the world of numismatics to people
who never before had any thoughts of collecting coins. The treasure brought
in a tremendous wave of demand from high-end buyers who now have discovered
the world of rare gold coins. They never would have gotten involved at all,
if not for the treasure. Many of these people now have purchased other rare
American coins and are building collections, all as result of the S.S.
Central America," Holton stated.
The recovered ship's cargo contained 330 Kellogg & Humbert ingots. Nearly
70 of them, each weighing roughly 200 to 500 ounces, were used in the summer
of 2001 to produce planchets for 5,000 gold commemoratives in conjunction
with the California Historical Society. Bullion from the ingots and the
unique, original pair of assayer's dies were used to strike the 2.5 ounce
commemoratives resembling the famous 1855 Kellogg & Company $50 round
"slug."
"To preserve the ingots' historical assayers' marks for posterity, the
faces of the bars were carefully cut and milled to permanently retain a
layer of gold that contains the fundamental information, such as the ingot's
weight and fineness, as well as the Kellogg & Humbert imprint," explained
Evans.
All of the saved "faceplates" have been sold, and continuing sales of the
$50 slug commemoratives have generated $125,000 in donations paid to date by
the California Gold Marketing Group to the California Historical Society.
"The names stamped on the assayers' bars read like a who's who of the
Gold Rush: 19 bars by Blake & Co. of Sacramento; 27 from Swiss banker and
San Francisco assayer, Henry Hentsch; 32 produced by Harris Marchand and Co.
of Sacramento and Marysville; 77 produced by Justh and Hunter in San
Francisco and Marysville, California; and 330 gold ingots, including the
Eureka bar, from the dominant assaying firm of the day, Kellogg & Humbert of
San Francisco."
"Although the vast majority of the treasure coins were made in San
Francisco, every U.S. Mint producing gold coins at the time was represented
in the inventory: Charlotte, Dahlonega, New Orleans, Philadelphia and San
Francisco. Obviously, some of the gold pieces were well traveled and used in
commerce, including privately made territorial coins," Manley explained.
Evans spent months meticulously examining and cataloging each item. More
than 5,000 of the recovered coins were 1857-S double eagles.
"Among the more than 300 recovered territorial coins, there were 14
octagonal $50 gold pieces produced by Augustus Humbert, the United States
assayer of gold in California. Later, he was with the firm of Kellogg &
Humbert," he recalled.
"There was one additional $50 denomination coin recovered; an 1855 round
Wass Molitor & Co. The bulk of the privately minted gold consisted of $10
territorial pieces from Humbert, the United States Assay Office, Moffat and
Co., and Wass Molitor. Rare $10 coins from Baldwin & Co. and Dubosq & Co.
were represented by only single examples of each."
The smallest gold coins were four California fractional gold pieces, tiny
1/4 dollars made by Antoine Nouzillet, a French jeweler in San Francisco.
Some non-Gold Rush era coins from the treasure also were sold to
collectors.
The oldest date on a recovered coin was on one of the three foreign Gold
pieces found on the ocean floor, an 1825 Hanover (Germany) 10 Thaler. The
other two foreign gold coins were an 1831 French 20 Francs and an 1851
English Sovereign. More than 2,000 silver Latin American coins recovered
from the Central America also were sold.
"There was tremendous demand for treasure items from coin collectors as
well as people interested in the 'Ol' West,' maritime history, sunken
treasure and the Gold Rush era," Manley said. "This was America's greatest
treasure, and thousands of people wanted a notable piece of it for
themselves."
###
For immediate release November 19, 2003
News Media Contacts: Dwight Manley (949) 719-1970 Q. David Bowers (603)
569-5312 Bob Evans (614) 226-7866 Christopher Holton (888) 524-2646 |
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