1672

Intact silver fork with captain's initials J.B. in clump with Mexican pillar dollar 1742 and small g

Currency:USD Category:Artifacts / Shipwreck Artifacts Start Price:1,200.00 USD Estimated At:1,500.00 - 3,000.00 USD
Intact silver fork with captain's initials J.B. in clump with Mexican pillar dollar 1742 and small g
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Intact silver fork with captain's initials J.B. in clump with Mexican pillar dollar 1742 and small glass shards, ex-Reijgersdaal (1747). 296 grams total. 7½" long. This is probably the most interesting and attractive shipwreck clump we have ever seen, as it combines valuable silver items of two very different fields of collecting—a coin and a fork—both choice and intact specimens, the coin with full date 1742 and the spoon with script initials J B (which happen to match those of the captain, Jan Brandt), with a thick chunk of orange "crud" in between that contains glass shards (no doubt from "onion" bottles), a bit of clay pipe stem, and a square hole where an iron spike once lay. The spike, in fact, is the reason for this agglomeration, as its sloughing oxidation not only made it all stick together but also diverted the chemical reaction from the silver. However it came about, this piece is surely one of the neatest items to come from this wreck, which yielded almost exclusively coins, or really from any wreck. From the Reijgersdaal (1747), with Sedwick photo-certificate.