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Empire Gold & Silver Mining Company Bond (Bodie, California)

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Mining Start Price:150.00 USD Estimated At:300.00 - 500.00 USD
Empire Gold & Silver Mining Company Bond (Bodie, California)
SOLD
225.00USDto 8******1+ buyer's premium (45.00)
This item SOLD at 2016 Dec 09 @ 18:25UTC-8 : PST/AKDT
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Very early & rare Bodie piece! Not cancelled. Incorporated in New York. No. 203, issued in 1864. Signed by Alonozo Child (president) and Henry K. Gates (secretary). Seventeen coupons still attached. Ornate border with three vignettes (two mining & one allegorical). Printed by Wm. H. Arthur, NY. Folds, with some staining along folds (front and back). Overall, very presentable. Information on this company is difficult to find, given how early it is. However, J. Ross Browne mentions it multiple times during his account of his trip to Bodie ("A Trip to Bodie Bluff and the Dead Sea of the West" 1865). Browne notes that: "There are several companies engaged in work­ing the principal veins that extend through Bodie Bluff. Among those the largest interests are held by time "Empire Gold and Silver Mining Company of New York," whose possessions commence at the face of the Bluff and run a thousand feet along each ledge. The limits are strictly defined, and no litigation has yet taken place, or is likely to occur, inasmuch as the claims of each Company are duly surveyed and recorded, the boundaries accurately laid down, anti every precaution taken to prevent those contentions which have proved the ruin of so many rich mineral districts in Nevada." Browne's account of Bodie 15 years before the 1879 rush is fascinating: "I pene­trated more shafts in the earth, was dragged through more dangerous pits and holes in wooden buckets, was forced to creep over more slippery ledges, rich in mineral de­posits, and to climb up a greater number of rickety ladders than I would like to undertake again for less than a thousand shares in the "Empire Gold and Silver Mining Company." (Prag Collection) State: California City: Bodie Date: 1864 FHWAC#: 34942