Treasure Gold Hidden In Plain Sight
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Many numismatic discoveries are hidden in plain sight. One such discovery is this 1855 dated $50 Kellogg Restrike.
What makes this particular piece so special? It's one of seven restrikes from the original dies! For the full story please visit this link: https://www.pcgs.com/news/treasure-gold-hidden-in-plain-sight
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Comments
Beautiful gold coin....However, still not receiving the newsletters. I subscribed again (fourth try). Cheers, RickO
@ricko when was the last time your received one? Have you received other emails, ie. Auction News subject lines? In any email you can find, can you click on the very bottom link 'click here to change your email preferences' and see if maybe 'PCGS Newsletter' is unchecked?
T. Whitmeyer
Front-end Developer, Collectors Universe
Hello,
I have never received one, and have signed up five or six times....I will go check, right now, just in case I missed something...However, I am very versed in computers, so I am not expecting to find anything.
Cheers, Rick
Cool story and nice catch by the collector.
Such a nice coin!
Great article! Thanks for posting it. It's great to read more information on this.
There's been great participation by CU forum members on this piece as well.
Great to have lots of people involved with this striking here!
https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/1033755/s-s-central-america-50-kellogg-restrike#latest
Wonderful story, thanks for sharing !!!
The article seems to suggest that not all of the Central America's cargo was recovered. I was under the impression that recent recovery efforts were as thorough as possible, taking virtually every artifiact. Can anyone shed some light on this?
The vast amount of treasure left to be recovered was never really there in the first place. There was a persistent rumor that the ship’s treasure included 600 X 50lb bar boxes of gold to support a struggling
Northern economy. That’s an additional 30,000 lbs of gold in ingot form.
In reality it was never there. The wreck site is pretty degraded and a
pile of gold that size would have risen up like a mountain of gold from the bottom.
The last salvage effort (2014) recovered a number of gold ingots, I think
around 45, over 1,700 double eagles, 1,200 smaller denomination gold coins, over a 100 California fractional gold coins and thousands of US silver dimes, etc.
One mystery that remains is what happened to Captain Badger’s (a passenger) carpet bag reportedly filled with $20,000 in double eagles.
He left it onboard.
For me it was the find of a lifetime. I knew that they had existed, as I found the Q. David Bowers specimen in a Stacks bowers sale. That put me on the hunt, and one quickly dropped in my lap. I guess this makes me a cherry picker.
This qualifies for a You suck award from me!
It's such an amazing find! I've been looking at these for many years and never found one! I'm glad you did!
Did I miss WHERE "in plain sight" it was?
That is a beautiful piece! QDB and I both shared an interest in the California Gold Rush and shipwrecks. We exchange a numbers of letters on the topic. He sent me an autographed copy of Kinder’s
Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea.
To be followed by a complimentary copy of his magnificent reference
on the treasures recovered from the
SSCA. A California Gold Rush History,
along with a letter thanking me for
contributions that I made to his book.
These coins were beautifully executed. Manley always went first class.
At the time this treasure was being marketed I also had many phone conversations with John J Ford Jr. I think he told me Bob Evans or someone from CADG used to send him a Christmas card. Remember at the time, Ford was considered the foremost expert with regards to gold ingots, etc.
Mr. Ford would send me signed Auction catalogs he had worked on.
I went to see him at an ANA show years ago , however, due to health reasons, he had to pull out at the last minute from his scheduled talk.
He would later invite me to attend an ANA in the Northwest, to rub elbows with the big boys. I can’t remember why I declined his invitation.
Now looking back, I wish I had gone.
I never met the man in person.
One fact that most numismatist’s
still around today don’t remember is that Ford had an insatiable desire for new research.
Of course the new discoveries of genuine gold ingots recovered from the SSCA cast a truth revealing light on the false or fake Western Assay bars.
Anyway your wonderful coin brought back some memories from a couple of decades ago.
A dealer offered it to me at bullion pricing, based on the fact it looked like the 2001 medals but with Die cracks and no counterstamp.