1228

George S. Dodge "Sharon Ingot" -

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money Start Price:7,500.00 USD Estimated At:15,000.00 - 20,000.00 USD
George S. Dodge  Sharon Ingot  -
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Holabird-Kagin Americana Office
3555 Airway Drive Suite#309
Reno, NV 89511
Thursday Feb 20th, 10am-6pm
* Preview also available by appointment

Live Auction
Friday & Saturday
Feb 20 & 21, 2014
9am PDT starting time, both days

Location
Atlantis Casino & Resort
Paradise A Room
3800 S. Virginia Street
Reno, NV 89502

Lot Pick Up
Holabird-Kagin Americana Office
3555 Airway Drive Suite #309
Reno, NV 89511
Sunday February 23rd, 10am-1pm

Silver Presentation Ingot for William Sharon. The George S. Dodge (Eureka Consolidated) PieceThis is the first of the Sharon ingots to surface publicly that involves a dinner participant of major importance in Nevada mining. The William Sharon silver dinner plate ingots have become very popular, and are an integral part op any western ingot or Comstock Collection. We first published the story on these ingots in 2001 when we sold the Levi Parsons Ingot. Since then, we have handled the Selover ingot and two more, including one handed down in the family of one of the managers of the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. These ingots were made for a large celebration honoring William Sharon “by his friends ion the Comstock Lode, 1876.” The party was held at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, the grandest establishment on the West Coast, built by California banker William Chapman Ralston. Sharon was Ralston’s right hand man, virtually running all of The Bank of California’s operations on the Comstock. Sharon succeeded Ralston as Bank president after Ralston’s suicide a few months earlier. Just prior to that, Sharon had been elected to the US Senate representing Nevada.The Dinner – Palace Hotel, San Francisco, 1876.Palace Hotel Manager Warren Leland was told to spare no expense. The hotel was lavishly furnished and flowers were everywhere. The event was very private, though there were many who tried to attend. The dinner sat 20 men – Sharon and 19 of his closest friends. All 20 had an engraved and personalized silver ingot at their place. It was reported that all the attendees were all old friends of Sharon’s, long before the Comstock. While this appears an exaggeration, the list is full of some of the West’s and East’s most prominent politicians, bankers, military and businessmen.The ingots were so exciting to the men in the news media, that they were fully described the next day in the San Francisco Examiner. “At each plate were glasses for eight different kinds of wine. The napkins were folded flat, and on each one a delicate bouquet. Beneath the napkin was a bill of fare engraved on solid silver, dug from the Comstock lode, and highly polished… Everybody went away from the dinner with an ingot in his hat.”The Ingot RecipientGeorge Sullivan Dodge was a decorated Civil War veteran, who was brought to the West Coast about 1871 to manage the monstrous new silver company in Eureka, the Eureka Consolidated. The mine was so rich that it rivaled the best of the Comstock, ultimately producing over $20 million from 1873 to 1906 alone. Dodge’s office was in San Francisco, right in the center of the Montgomery Street business section (Bank of California, etc.) where most of the financial ends of the Comstock mining barons took place. Dodge appears to have been appointed the first president of the Company, with the attendant job of getting the mine into profitable and large scale production. He was in charge of hiring the best mining men and putting together a mining crew to rival the best on the Comstock. Backers of the Eureka Consolidated brought in their own man, Dodge. Silver had been discovered (near today’s Eureka) in 1864 by New York prospectors, who aptly names the site New York Canyon. A company was immediately organized in New York under Major William Wirt McCoy. McCoy, a Mexican War veteran, had come out to California in the 1850’s. After the New York Canyon discoveries, he became involved with the prospects at Eureka and pushed the organization of a public company in the late 1860’s. Two very successful mining men at Austin, Nevada – Buell and Bateman, consolidated many of the mines and formed Eureka Consolidated, probably in conjunction with McCoy and his New York backers. As a military man, McCoy would have insisted on military management of this important venture, and Dodge was chosen. Within a decade, the Eureka Consolidated became one of the largest producing silver mines in history, the largest outside the famed Comstock.Dodge was born in Vermont in 1838. In 1861 he was appointed Colonel in the Quartermaster’s Department (Payroll). He was promoted to Brigadier General in January, 1865. He served as Consul to Germany after the War before heading to San Francisco. Dodge retired from the Eureka Consolidated by the late 1870’s, and lived the life of a mining capitalist. He and his wife moved across the Bay, where he died in Oakland in 1881. - HKA#66355