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Treasures from the SS Central America

     Everyone has seen the Western movies with the grizzly old prospector walking into the local saloon and ordering a shot of whiskey.  The burly bartender looks at him askance and demands a “pinch of gold” for his request.  The miner pulls out a leather pouch and drops it on the counter with a thud.  The bartender extracts his due and the drink is poured.  Saloonkeepers soon realized that the larger the bartender’s hand, the bigger the daily take, so the burly bartender became the norm.  His large fingers were sometimes complemented by a pea or other hard object held between the thumb and forefinger.  This created a void that would be filled with extra gold whenever the “pinch” was required for payment.  The miner would be cheated out of the precious fruit of his labors.

There are numerous ways that gold is found in nature.  The golden metal can be classified in five general categories: flour, dust, grain, flake, and nugget.  These are broad groups and some overlapping is found.  In rivers and streams, most of the gold found would be alluvial nuggets, flakes, and grain rounded and smoothed by the constant flowing water and their tumbling over rocks.

The proverbial “veins of gold” in mines sometimes would yield unusually shaped nuggets, occasionally with quartz or other minerals ensconced among the gold flakes.  Nuggets from these mountainous deposits sometimes blur the classification boundaries and can easily be classified as “flat nuggets.”  Each piece of gold, no matter what it is called, is unique.  The varied nature of each unit of gold adds to the desirability of this treasure trove of history.  These nuggets, flakes, grain, dust, and flour are the only gold available to the general public that can be positively documented to the great Western Gold Rush.  This gold was mined and panned by genuine Forty-Niners.     

The Ill-fated Voyage of the SS Central America

   When gold fever hit the denizens of the past, men (and women) would use all available means to reach wherever the gold was found.  The preferred method of travel to the Western gold fields was by ocean-going ships.  The fastest way to California was a steamship to Panama, a river ride and then some mule packing through the mountains, and then again on another steamship up the Pacific coast…usually to San Francisco. The trip from California back to the East also was not without peril.  The most commonly plied water route consisted of a boat trip from San Francisco to Panama.  Until the railroad was built, one had to travel by mule pack, then by a riverboat to traverse the fifty-mile Isthmus of Panama.  Once on the Atlantic side, one would board another ocean going vessel and travel up the East Coast, usually ending the trip in New York City.  There was nothing to warn a ship about storms or other hazards of the sea.

     Many of the passengers aboard the Central America had been together since they departed San Francisco in the steamer Sonora and traveled down the Pacific coast to Panama.  After the journey across the Isthmus of Panama, they had embarked on what they thought would be the easy journey up the Atlantic coast to New York City.  The trip on the SS Central America would not turn out as hoped, in fact it would result in the greatest peacetime maritime disaster in American history.  Only the heroic efforts of the Captain and the passing ship, the Norwegian bark Ellen, would allow nearly all the women and children along with a few men to escape the watery grave awaiting over four hundred souls on this star-crossed ship.  Some laid the blame to the name change from the George Law to the Central America only a few months prior to this unprecedented calamity.  Of course, it was the unexpected hurricane that doomed the ship, her cargo, and the hapless passengers, many of whom were miners who were expecting to live like kings on their golden wealth from the distant West.    

     Today’s sophisticated weather warnings would have saved the SS Central America had they been available, she would simply have steered a course around the storm or turned around if that were not possible.  Of course, Captain Herndon did not have that luxury and plowed ahead unaware of the danger that awaited his giant side-wheel steamship.  The storm hit and for two days the men (and women and children) bailed water, but to no avail.  Taking on much more water than they were ridding themselves of, the experienced Captain knew his charge was going to be lost.  On September 12, 1857, Captain Herndon calmly put on his dress uniform and returned to the helm and sank beneath the pounding waves of the unforgiving Atlantic Ocean.  There she lay in cold, stony silence until she was discovered in 1988 by the salvers, who must have run the gamut of emotions when they saw the huge paddlewheel in the murky depths.  At over 8,000 feet, she was nearly perfectly preserved save for the iron-eating bacteria that devoured much of the one hundred fifty tons of iron that made up the structure of the doomed vessel.

The recovery and subsequent preservation of the gold from the SS Central America is one of the greatest tales in all of treasure hunting history.  The nearly perfectly preserved gold and other artifacts was a result of the depth, coldness, and pressure.  The gold nuggets from the SS Central America represent a unique opportunity to purchase an authentic relic from the California Gold Rush.

Treasures from the SS Central America

The story of this remarkable offering is in some ways much like finding the Central America. During 1999 Sotheby’s of New York scheduled to hold the public auction of  SS Central America gold treasure which included all of the nuggets and pinches.

However, this was not an easy feat because Sotheby’s sale of  December, 1999 was suddenly stopped by a court injunction order. After almost six months Sotheby’s later sold the gold nuggets and some of the other SS Central America Treasure in June of  2000.

The 0.5 gram lot of nuggets and the 1.5 gram pinch lot offered have been certified by Collectors Universe as genuine 49er gold from the greatest American treasure ship of all time – the SS Central America.   The nuggets and pinch lots have been handsomely encapsulated in Collectors Universe holders to offer the most protection possible while providing an outstanding viewing vehicle.

This is unprecedented in the collectable industry: GOLD mined by California 49er’s beginning in 1848 which was placed on board the SS Central America, which sank in September 1857. The gold was brought up by salvagers, sold at auction and certified by Collectors Universe. Also, a very important fact about the SS Central America treasure is most of the gold coins, bars and ingots will be priced from $5,000 to 7 figures!! This is the most affordable piece of California Gold Rush History available to anyone  who wants a piece of the SS Central America history and part of this great American Era.

THE SS CENTRAL AMERICA OFFERING

THIS OFFERING OF 1.5 GRAM PINCHES, AS THEY WERE KNOWN AND .5 GRAM NUGGETS IS AN AFFORDABLE OPPORTUNITY FOR THE AVERAGE AMERICAN TO OWN AN AUTHENTICATED PART OF AMERICAN HISTORY

Complete Set of ½ gram and 1 ½ gram Authentic California 49er Gold ……….. $850.00

 

Joel Rettew Special for Complete Set is: $750.00

FOR MORE CALIFORNIA GOLD NUGGETS CLICK HERE