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Sather & Church Treasure Box, S.S. Central America, 1857 [159483]

Currency:USD Category:Artifacts / Shipwreck Artifacts Start Price:5,000.00 USD Estimated At:10,000.00 USD and UP
Sather & Church Treasure Box, S.S. Central America, 1857 [159483]
SOLD
5,250.00USD+ (1,050.00) buyer's premium + applicable fees & taxes.
This item SOLD at 2022 Dec 03 @ 18:12UTC-8 : PST/AKDT
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Treasure box that contained gold coin and dust from "The Garden of Gold" area. This box was carefully removed by Nemo in parts. The top, bottom, and most of three sides are intact. Part of the bottom and the back panel are constructs of the various broken parts, but the box displays well overall. The seals on this box are at the middle of the major wood joints in front and back, where large red wax seals embossed with Sather & Church's name. Sather & Church would have addressed this box to a debtor bank, in this case the American Exchange Bank, who were their partners for the gold rush years. Sather & Church got their start in San Francisco in 1850. Pedar Sather and Edward Church were money brokers in New York. In 1851, thy took on a partner, Francis M. Drexel of Philadelphia, founder of the Drexel fortune. Peter (Pedar) Sather and Edward W. Church formed a partnership in New York in the mid-1840s after Church had filed for bankruptcy in March 1842.The partnership was in full swing by 1845, though the pair did not advertise their services. Listed as "brokers" in the various New York City directories, the pair opened a banking office in San Francisco in 1850. By November 1850, the pair had started their regular shipments of gold to New York, where they kept another office open, managed by Peter Sather, who lived across the harbor in Brooklyn. Sather closed the New York office about 1854. In May of 1851 the partners greatly strengthened their firm by adding the partnership of Francis Drexel, a prominent Philadelphia banker who clearly was trying to get his fingers into the California gold business. Together the three partners quickly built a huge and profitable firm. Drexel, Sather & Church became one of the largest gold shippers during the golden years of the California Gold Rush, the 1850s. Drexel had founded Drexel & Co. in Philadelphia in 1837. While he died in 1863, Drexel's firm continued to grow, becoming one of the largest investment banking firms in the world -- until -- somebody invented "Junk Bonds." Under poor management, the firm got involved in illegal trading and other shenanigans causing permanent bankruptcy in 1990.

Date: 1857
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Provenance: SS Central America Collection