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Silver "tumbaga" bar M-153 (half-cut of a larger bar), uncleaned, 8.95 lb av, marked with fineness i

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money / Coins: Shipwreck Ingots Start Price:8,000.00 USD Estimated At:10,000.00 - 20,000.00 USD
Silver  tumbaga  bar M-153 (half-cut of a larger bar), uncleaned, 8.95 lb av, marked with fineness i
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Silver "tumbaga" bar M-153 (half-cut of a larger bar), uncleaned, 8.95 lb av, marked with fineness iV9 x (1510/2400), assayer B~Vo, and serial RC, ex-"Tumbaga Wreck" (ca. 1528), ex-Frank Sedwick, García-Barneche Plate. 9" x 5¼" x ¾". This bar stands unique among the more than 200 "tumbaga" silver bars found on this wreck in that it was intentionally left unconserved to show the lovely green and orange colors caused by its high copper content (rising up in a section of visibly un-mixed metal that reads as high as 94% copper in XRF tests, elsewhere as low as 20%), also in that it is a half-cut from a larger bar (wide, flat), chiseled and broken in its time with no clue as to whatever happened to the other half (which probably contained the circular tax stamps that are lacking on this piece), and finally in that the "top" surface has many peaks and swirls from cooling before the metal fully melted, indicative of a hasty manufacture "in the field." The other side of the bar has been partially cleaned to reveal some silvery surface and all of the markings in one area near the break, just below a large rusty patch of copper, with a big gas pit to the right of that. The R-series bars with assayer B~Vo like this one are among the most popular, as the assayer-mark is believed to stand for Cortés' assayer Bernardino Vázquez de Tapia. Frank Sedwick handled the majority of the "tumbaga" silver bars from the divers but kept this one for himself, now being sold for the first time by his heirs. From the "Tumbaga Wreck" (ca. 1528), with photo-certificate, pedigreed to the Dr. Frank Sedwick Collection and plated on page 116 of García-Barneche's Tumbaga Saga (2nd ed, 2018).