Stay tuned! This fascinating treasure wreck was originally examined and excavated in 1988-1991, when the technology to conduct deep sea excavations was still in its infancy. As a result, it's now becoming evident that this wreck site was not completely excavated during the first attempt. So the past - i.e., the first excavation in, 1988-1991 - is prologue!
A returnn exploratory examination of this wreck in 2014, by perhaps the most competent and experienced deep sea salvors in the world (Odyssey Marine Exploration), with the most advanced underwater technology, yielded 46 gold ingots and approximately 2,900 gold coins, not all of which coins are from the U.S. mint. Some of the non-U.S. mint coins are rarer and numismatically more valuable. Further excavations are projected.
Keep the record books open on this one. The archaeology and treasure saga is not yet complete. Furthermore, I do not believe that an accurate public accounting was ever made of the extent of the vast amount of treasure recovered in the first expedition, in 1988-1991 - no such accounting is revealed in this book, though one can drool over the color photos of the fantastic gold hoard.
Not withstanding the yield from recent, 2014 excavation, this book remains the most valuable and somewhat definitive account of the historic importance of this shipwreck, a shipwreck of the California gold rush. The book records the history of the sinking of the S.S. Central America, and contains an extensive photographic record of the large selection of "time-capsule" artifacts, such as personal belongings, and the ship's bell, recovered from the shipwreck. Most fascinating of all are the photos of a unique aspect of the gold cargo: the large variety of individual, one-of-a-kind gold ingots - the personal property of individual passengers, gold prospectors - covered with assayer marks, the names of the various assayers, and recording the weight and gold content of each ingot.
"IF" - repeat, "IF" - an individual gold ingot from the gold rush contains assayer markings, I doubt that gold ingot (no matter how HUGE) will ever be melted, because of its "numismatic value." "Numismatic" value is conveyed by, e.g., the assayer markings, which make the gold ingot a "collectible" and its worth substantially in excess of the monetary value of weight content of the ingot's gold.
"Numismatic" value is distinguished from "melt" value, which means the market price in of the weight of the gold content of, e.g., a gold coin, like a gold coin produced on a mass basis by a national mint which, although existing in coin form, typically have not much more value than the market value of the metal weight of the gold coin. These are the types of commonly-availalble gold coins one might purchase in some quantity, and placed in one's bank deposit box, as a hedge against some sort of financial crisis.
The same "numismatic" value feature applies to the commercially-produced gold coins recovered from the S.S.Central America - see photos. The prospectors in the California gold rush needed "currency" to transact business, like going to the pub or the food market, This practical need for currency prompted private firms to mint their own gold coins to meet this need. Such gold coins are rarer and, thus, typically have higher numismatic value than U.S.-government issued gold coins.
I doubt that many gold ingots - with assayer's markings - from the California gold rush survived much past the time when they reached their owner's destination, where they would have been melted down for pragmatic commercial uses. If so, the hoard of gold ingots from the S.S. Central America represents a rare treasure trove of extremely unique historical artifacts.
Regarding the 2014 excavations, see the NEWSWEEK article dated August 30, 2014, entitled "Shipwreck of S.S. Central America Yields More Gold."
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