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Colombian gold bar, 358 grams, with markings of assayer/foundry SARGOSA / PECARTA, fineness XXII-dot

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money / Shipwreck Ingots Start Price:28,000.00 USD Estimated At:35,000.00 - 50,000.00 USD
Colombian gold bar, 358 grams, with markings of assayer/foundry SARGOSA / PECARTA, fineness XXII-dot
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This item SOLD at 2021 May 07 @ 10:52UTC-4 : AST/EDT
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Colombian gold bar, 358 grams, with markings of assayer/foundry SARGOSA / PECARTA, fineness XXII-dot (22.25K), and tax stamps, ex-Atocha (1622). 5" x 1" x 1/4". This is the highest-karat Atocha gold bar we have seen (besides the unofficial "church" bars, which are quite different), correspondingly somewhat compact in length and height but with top surface wide enough to allow for lots of markings, including four each of the tax stamps and fineness (the latter also typically manifest as lightly scratched numerals on the surface) and one assayer/foundry cartouche that links this bar to the gold mine (foundry) at Zaragoza, Colombia, and an assayer (or similar official) whose exact name has not been determined (the letters of which were monogrammed together to make "PECARTA"). Zaragoza, on the shores of the Rio Nechi in the province of Antioquia, was home to one of the most prolific gold mines in the early 1600s, producing some 20 million pesos of gold from 1590 to 1645, and was represented by a caja real (royal treasury office) since 1582. One end of this bar is thicker and narrower, with smoothly chiseled cut (tiny) and cylindrical assayer's "bite," while the other end shows two clean, small cuts from its time. The bottom of the bar (equally smooth as the top) was stamped "11" by the salvors and then re-stamped "66". This bar is additionally desirable as being listed on the ship's manifest ("p. 3 item 14"). All in all, an attractive bar in a manageable size. From the Atocha (1622), with original Fisher photo-certificate #85A-GB066.
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