THE $8,000,000 EUREKA B EUREKA BAR AR · 2019-04-24 · 29 28 by Marcy Gibbel B ig deal! That’s what’s being said about the $8-million sale of an 80-pound gold bar nicknamed “Eureka”

Monaco Financial, LLC4900 Birch Street

Newport Beach, CA 92660Toll-Free: 1-888-751-1933

FORT KNOX?

WHAT’S IN

FEBRUARY 2002

THE $8,000,000EUREKA BAR

For more information on this story and the S.S. Central America treasure, contact:

Monaco Financial, LLC4900 Birch Street

Newport Beach, CA 92660Toll-Free: 1-888-751-1933

www.zoomcoin.com

FORT KNOX?

WHAT’S IN

FEBRUARY 2002

THE $8,000,000EUREKA BAR

For more information on this story andthe S.S. Central America treasure, contact:

2928 www.coinagemag.com

by Marcy Gibbel

Big deal!That’s what’s being said about the $8-

million sale of an 80-pound gold barnicknamed “Eureka” that was salvagedfrom the SS Central America shipwreck.

Monaco Financial, LLC, a member ofthe Monex family of companies in New-port Beach, California, sold the assay barto a private collector in the highest-pricedtransaction ever carried out involving asingle numismatic item—a very big dealindeed! Prior to this sale, the record was$4.14 million—the amount paid in Au-gust 1999 for the Childs specimen of the1804 silver dollar.

The California Gold Marketing Group,a consortium of coin dealers and in-vestors that purchased and marketed 90percent of the SS Central America’s trea-sure, previously had turned down an offerthat to most was a reasonable one.

Larry Goldberg, a principal in the Cal-ifornia Gold Group, had this explanation:

“We had turned down some time ago$7 million for the bar, and we felt that theprice it was transacted at, $8 million, wasvery fair. No museum in the world has abar like this, it doesn’t exist anywhere,

and this is a unique item. If it was a fa-mous painting, you’re talking aboutsomething that would bring maybe $100million, so it was good value for the clientwho bought it.”

The bar’s new owner is described onlyas a “Forbes 400 business executive.” Forhim, it’s not about the money. It’s aboutadding to his private museum of variouscollections, including a rather substantialcoin collection.

Said Adam Crum, vice president ofMonaco Financial: “He has an apprecia-tion for art and fine collectibles, and likesto surround himself with it. In his life-time, his treasures will never be sold.”

The Eureka bar was viewed by millionsof people before it disappeared into thepurchaser’s “black hole” of collections. Itappeared on “The Today Show” and otherTV programs in early February 2000 be-fore becoming the centerpiece of a $20-million touring “Ship of Gold” exhibit.

The exhibit crisscrossed the country,stopping at museums and conventionsfrom Long Beach to Philadelphia. The barwas displayed along with dozens ofsmaller bars and gold coins from the SSCentral America in a 30-foot replica ofthe ship’s hull. Smaller than a loaf ofbread and weighing in at 933.34 ounces,the Kellogg & Humbert bar sat on crim-son velvet inside a binnacle, a brasspedestal with a glass top that usuallyhouses a ship’s compass.

While the display was amazing, it wasjust as fascinating to see visitors’ reac-tions to the bar. People stared at it inwide-eyed wonderment, holding on to thehandrail around the outside of the displayto get a closer look. Crum compared it toviewing a stunning display at the Smith-sonian Institution.

“If you go to the room where the Hope

Diamond is and watch the reaction, lookat the line of people—they’re standing inline to look at this Hope Diamond. It’s theonly thing that I’ve ever seen to compareto the Eureka bar,” Crum exclaimed.

“When you go to the ANA convention,and I had the opportunity also to go to theCalifornia Historical Society, watchingtheir members stand in line and ooh andaah on an item as if it was a Picasso orRenoir hanging on a wall.”

Like a Picasso, or Reuben if you prefermore traditional art, much goes into de-termining the value of this numismaticitem.

Yes, numismatic item.Obviously, the Eureka bar is not a coin,

but it is a numismatic item. By definition,numismatic items can include coins,medals, tokens, paper money or anythinghaving to do with commerce and financialtransactions.

The assay bar certainly appears to havebeen meant for a single transaction. Itsfineness of .903 and its serial number,1003, are stamped on its face. It is alsostamped with its 1857 value of$17,433.57.

Crum said the only reason to stampsuch bars with a value was because theywere used in commerce.

“From historical records, we know thattransactions were completed with thetransfer of bars as opposed to just coins.It’s as if it was a $17,000 bill.”

Consider this: In 1858, Irvine Ranch,which made up most of what today isOrange County, California, was pur-chased for $41,000. Rather than countingout $41,000 worth of gold coins, thetransaction could have been completedwith 21⁄2 such bars. It’s not exactly pock-et change either way—but in this case,fewer is better.

By comparison, Crum said, the largestrepresentation of any ingot in the Smith-sonian Institution’s National NumismaticCollection is just over 3 ounces, while thesmallest is about 11⁄2 ounces.

“Those are considered numismatic col-lectibles and part of the national collec-tion. They’re insignificant in size by com-parison,” he remarked.

So, to paraphrase Larry Goldberg, thiswas the biggest bar and it was made byKellogg & Company, the biggest assayer.But the biggest and the best has a facevalue of just over $17,000, a far cry fromthe $8 million price it commanded. Bigdeal.

It is a big deal.“This is historically a very, very impor-

tant event, and I don’t think it has any-thing to do with the price of gold,” Gold-berg declared.

Maybe not, but the fact that it is goldcan’t hurt its value.

Goldberg continued: “It’s a symbol ofreal wealth, real money. Today’s money isnot backed by gold, not backed by silver;it’s just paper. This really is true money.Over the years, this is the thing that haslasted, that people value. Wars or whatev-er happens historically, gold has alwaysbeen lasting.”

And last it has.The Eureka bar lay undisturbed a mile-

and-a-half below the surface of the At-lantic Ocean for 130 years. The SS Cen-tral America was carrying nearly 500passengers and 21 tons of California goldfrom Panama to New York when, on Sept.11, 1857, she began to take in waterthrough the driveshaft during a hurricane.By the following afternoon, the storm haddestroyed the steamer, and its ruins andtreasure sank off the Carolina coast.

continued on page 31

$8 MillionWorth

Of Gold

A close-up of the EurekaBar, courtesy Monaco

Financial, LLC.

The SS Central America was asidewheel steamer, like this

rendition. A replica of the ship’shull was part of a traveling

museum.

The disaster killed 435 people, thegreatest loss of life on a commercial pas-senger vessel during the entire 19th cen-tury. The news shocked the world, andcontributed to the financial crash knownas “The Panic of 1857.”

In the early days of the California GoldRush, private mints and assay offices,such as Kellogg & Humbert, Baldwin &Company and F.D. Kohler, accepted golddust and nuggets from successful ’49ers.They processed the gold and cast it intoingots and stamped them with the purityof the gold, the dollar value and the fine-ness of the metal or metals it was alloyedwith.

These gold bars were used to fuelAmerica’s pre-Civil War economy. Barsthe size of the Eureka bar were most like-ly destined to make large domestic andinternational transactions easier, whileother bars that went down with the wreckwere meant to be melted and turned intocoins.

The loss of the SS Central America’scargo was disastrous for many businesses,which couldn’t pay creditors or meet pay-rolls. New York banks began to fail, andstores and factories closed. People pan-icked, and the nation’s economy entered amajor recession—a setback that is consid-ered by some to be one of the causes of

the Civil War.Salvaged in the mid-1980s, Eureka still

bears the scars of its misfortune—rust andlimestone have discolored the lower partof the brick—reminding us that there is ahuman element involved, too.

For example, gold was going for$20.67 an ounce at the time, and it prob-ably would have taken 12 miners morethan a year to find that much gold.

Survivors’ accounts told of passengerswho acquired their wealth prior to theGold Rush, as well as those who wereminers returning to the East Coast to in-vest their newfound wealth. Some passen-gers were headed to retrieve their familiesand return to California and its opportuni-ties. And all were enthusiastic about theirfuture.

Said Crum: “The human story here tome is the most interesting thing. Thesepeople had more money in their pocketsthan most people were ever going to makein their lifetime as a result of going outthere and doing what they did in SanFrancisco. And then knowing that they lit-erally had come to the end. The gold be-came meaningless at that point.”

On Jan. 12, 2001, Crum had the oppor-tunity with Bob Evans, a geologist who isthe gold’s chief caretaker, to enter thevault where the bars were being stored.

“It’s hard,” he said, “to explain tosomeone who hasn’t experienced walkingin there and seeing four shelves going allthe way around three walls of this vaultfull of these bars, and then seeing twoshelves that had the monsters on them andthe electricity that seems to be alive in thevault. It’s like they [the people] have allrisen.

“David Bowers and I spoke about this,and a lot of emotion wells up inside whenyou’re around it, especially if you knowthe story. It’s very difficult to explain. Ithas a life of its own.”

While the touring days of the “largestnumismatic item around” may be over,you can still read about the Eureka barand the rest of the gold.

The tale is told in Gary Kinder’s bookShip of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea.Kinder blends his narrative of the disasterwith the story of Tommy Thompson’s dis-covery and recovery of the treasure.

Q. David Bowers also writes about itextensively in his American Coin Trea-sures and Hoards. In this book, publishedin 1997, Bowers recalls the ship’s storyfrom the moment more than 400 passen-gers boarded in San Francisco to the le-gal dispute that occurred once the coinswere ready for auction.

The remaining bars have been chang-ing hands at auction sales. There are only13 Gold Rush-era bricks weighing 500troy ounces or more known to exist to-day. Eight of those are now in private col-lections, with the remaining five availablefor acquisition as of this writing in earlyDecember 2001. Some of the smallerbars have been purchased by private indi-viduals and donated to museums, but amajority of them are out of the publiceye.

While Crum has sold two of the largerKellogg & Humbert bars—certainly bigdeals for him and Monaco Financial, hehas mixed feelings about the sales.

“It’s sad to go into the vault now,” hesaid. “When I saw it, there were 532 barssitting in there. You go in now and thereare 100. You realize it’s going away. Oneside of you appreciates the fact that peo-ple are enjoying the treasure and owningit now, and the other side realizes it’sgone.

“Once it’s gone, you’re not going tosee these things very often.”

For numismatists and non-collectorsalike, that’s probably the biggest deal yet.

* * *For more information about the trea-

sure, contact Monaco Financial, LLC, at(949) 752-1933.

View additional images and scheduledtour dates for the SS Central America,minus the Eureka bar, on the World WideWeb at www.shipofgoldinfo.com

The Eureka Bar from page 29

Adam Crum displays the second largest Kellogg bar. It has a face value of $12,225.62, ascompared to the Eureka bar’s $17,000 value. It is the last remaining “monster” ingot.

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