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SS City of Cairo Discovered & 100 Ton Silver Coin Cargo Recovered

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100 Tons of Silver Coins

 

The City of Cairo was traveling from Bombay, India to the UK with stopovers in South Africa and Brazil and among her cargo of 7,422 tons were 2,000 boxes of silver Indian rupees stowed in the Number 4 hold.

 

Recovery Site with Pics of the Coins

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I'm guessing much of this silver will be made into silver bars showing this ship similar to what was done with the silver salvaged from the S S Gairsoppa which was also sunk during WWII.

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I would think that they would not melt silver coins from the 1800's. The SS Gairsoppa was only carrying large bars.

(I think 1000 oz)

So the only option was to make smaller bars.

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Considering the dates visible in the photos, these might have been coins pulled from circulation in 1919 (and forward) when coinage was debased.....Just a thought.

 

The jute bags seem very well preserved for 60 years in sea water.

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Better date and better condition coins would be sold as "rare collector coins" to the general public after heavy hyping and marketing The rest will probably be melted and refined. Don't forget that sea water is not kind to silver coins.

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At 17,000 ft the water is so cold that the corrosion and decay process is greatly slowed down. The jutte bags may look good but I wouldn't trust them to support any weight. And there will still be some corrosion on the silver but nothing like there would be at the much shallower depths that many other coins have been recovered from.

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The coins looked pretty good in most of the photos. Since they were in bags, the lower ones it the bags would be pretty nice. I bet they have a pretty good date run also. Hopefully we will hear later on what they have.

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Check the story on CNN... they were melted and the silver sold into the bullion market.

 

Sounds like they missed an opportunity to gain additional profit from the story.

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