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NV - Virginia City,Storey County - 1866-1868 - Savage Mining Company Bullion Register

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Western Americana Start Price:2,500.00 USD Estimated At:5,000.00 - 8,000.00 USD
NV - Virginia City,Storey County - 1866-1868 - Savage Mining Company Bullion Register
Session D is a Mail-Bid Only Auction. Absentee bids will be accepted only. No live bidding will be allowed. All winners will be contacted after the auction. BIDDING ENDS MONDAY JUNE 27 AT 5PM PACIFIC TIME!!!
One of the earliest known ledgers from the mine that was situated between Gold Hill and Virginia City. Privately owned and recently offered up for auction, this leather bound and gilt lettered register is in pristine condition. The ledger starts in March of 1866 and ends in May 1868. All the pages are white. All the numbers are legible. One notation says “amount assayed by Theall and Co.” Thus, in the earliest part of its existence, the mine did not always use the Chollar-Potosi Assay Office as some historians assert. August Soderling, a Swedish immigrant, was the assayer and manager of Theall and Co. in Austin, Nevada during the 1860s [Ref: Gariaeff, Nick, “August Soderling,” 2010]. Mark Twain wrote an article titled, “Silver Bars – How Assayed” that appeared in the Territorial Enterprise in 1863 about the process of assaying and took a tour of Theall and Co. to gather information for his piece. He likened the process of heating rock full of silver or gold to that of the experience Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego had in the furnace before God rescued them from the fire. Assaying was refinement of the holiest proportions, especially to miners. The ledger shows the company assayed twice as much silver ore as it did gold. The amount Theall and Co. assayed for the mine at the end of 1867 was $55,753.24 in gold and 118,215.33 in silver for a grand total of 173,968.57 for the year. There are no year-end totals for any other assay company.