How Do You Tell Sea Salvaged Gold From Not?

As far as I'm aware gold does not acquire toning nor does it tarnish but it's softness does make it prone to dings but then I'm no expert. I await an expert's opinion.

A lump of gold will dissolve in seawater, but very, very slowly. The alluvial gold nuggets that washed down the now-sunken rivers of Beringia during the last ice age are still there and still mostly intact after thousands of years, which is why we now have Discovery Channel documentaries about dredging them up. A gold coin soaking in seawater for a few centuries or even a few millennia isn't going to show obvious corrosion from the salt water alone.

What will damage gold coins underwater is environmental friction - near the surface, wave and tide action will cause friction with the sand. Coral, barnacles and other sea-life can also attach themselves to a piece of gold, carving out a little dint for themselves in the soft metal; further damage can result from attempting to remove such concretions.

But if the coins are sealed up pretty well in a barrel or something similar, so that salt water can get in but not sand or sea-life, the coins should be pretty much undamaged. I believe the SS Central America wreck coins are in this category.

I agree with the post above when salt water is in contact with gold it will make little bubbles in the gold due to being in contact with it

Sap, I've read "ship of gold"
Great novel about SS. Central America

I do not have the coin in hand but will post a picture when we get it. It is lot 28978 in Heritage auction #3031. It has a few dings and the hi-res pics show a lot of small nicks. Discussed this at length with fellow collectors and figured the quality of the strike outweighed the sea salvaged stigma. Needed a Chas. III 8E for the type set.

If I could just attribute this.

Does sea salvaged gold "color up" eventually? I stuck a white 1964 quarter in an old sulfur envelope a couple years ago as an experiment. I can't find it...AAARGH.

Not that I play with gold that much, but I do observe...

Westwood, that 1777 8E has the prototypical surface for salvaged gold - that slightly frosted or matte or dull surface (depending on your descriptive preference). If you've seen a lot of 1715 Fleet gold, that look should be familiar. As mentioned, it's more from the slow effect of friction from sand, etc. that ever-so-slightly etches the surface... moreso than any chemical corrosion/etching like you'd see on silver (which gold, even alloyed, is generally immune from). Salt-water really should at most cause a few isolated slight pits in spots that might be slightly higher in copper (those which present as a slightly reddish spot on a piece with normal skin).

A few other thoughts:

-- Yes, slightly dull look, but does have a nice strike for Mexico portrait gold (no weak shield).

-- Will it tone? As you know (and showed), old collection gold gets that orange hue to it, but it's slow to develop and subtle. I'm not familiar with the intricacies of how gold alloy tones, so I can't comment there. One factor here of course is the effect that whatever chemical/acid wash it was given has had upon the reactivity of the surface. My experience with salvaged pieces is that whatever neutralizing they do at the end of conservation seems to somewhat retard any future toning. I wouldn't hold my breath...

ColonialJohn, any thoughts on that?

Of course, being in the slab won't help. If you decide you like the piece and want to hold it for a while... AND also want to give it a chance to possibly tone up somewhat... it probably needs to be cracked out.


Eh... I understand how you're saying that an attributed wreck may get the benefit of the doubt over generic salvage, and that can in fact happen. However, there's a lot of subjectivity in grading cos.' handling of wreck material which I think can sometimes explain that observation. Dealing with salvage material is not their main area of expertise, and I think a lot may depend on what a given grader may happen to know or recognize about certain types of material... and then also whether a company has done bulk encapsulation for a certain wreck. That may influence the in-house knowledge of that material.

I also think there's subjectivity in the details grade that gets assigned b/c sometimes, it's not always easy to see past "seawear" to judge pre-existing "circulation wear". All the 1783 8R from the El Cazador are in theory "uncirculated"... but some are seaworn to the point where calling a given piece UNC would seem silly.

Another case is the well-preserved 1733-34 ducatons from the Vliegenthart (a whole chest of neat, tightly packed rows). I've seen pieces that are without any doubt specimens from this salvage slabbed with or without attribution... sometimes AU details, sometimes UNC details... sometimes even AU or UNC "problem-free" grades. Yet, they're all from the same batch, all UNC when they went down. Now, referring to what I said above, if the grader happens to be familiar with this material such that when he sees a high-grade 1734 ducaton with some scattered surface corrosion, he knows it's an UNC piece from the Vliegenthart, he will be inclined to call it "UNC details" (though "Vliegenthart" might not necessarily be noted). If someone isn't familiar, however, that same coin might get called "AU details" as an honest guess. So, it doesn't necessarily have to be that known provenance is DIRECTLY garnering a coin bonus points... it might be more indirect.

In this case, NGC went "AU details". It's definitely strong for an AU... whether it deserves "UNC details" is debatable. ANACS will actually call something "AU58 details" - that might apply here.

-- Potential attribution: I don't think that would ever be possible here... I don't know of any wreck that produced these in known quantities, and a quick check of Sedwick's online archives doesn't show any similar 8E with wreck provenance. Don't forget, a lot of times the origin of such material is, for obvious reasons, kept quiet on purpose. Probably the best you could get is to ask "someone who would know if", off the record, there is any kind of salvage that produced material like this.

Happen to see this today - stated wreck provenance, granted a problem-free grade. This is, I suppose, acceptable enough, yet the piece does have a slight bit of that matte look talked about:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1724-Nether...171217552918

GERMANICVS, thanks for posting that 8E... I figured someone might mention or post a Luz coin - it's one of the more prominent wreck sources of Spanish milled gold. They are another example of pieces that you sometimes see with no assigned wreck pedigree (but its origin is fairly certain from the year/mint/"look") slabbed problem free... and occasionally achieving a problem-free grade even WITH the pedigree.



Yup... certainly it's much more intact than silver would be in that setting (see the cob 8R recovered from that wreck)... However, it does have that flat/matte finish (though maybe to a slightly lesser degree than the 1777 8E). Regarding those accretions - in hand, does it look that's "into" the surface of the coin at all, or is it just topical residue?