Atocha 1622 — Class Factor 1.0 Silver Bar Slice Nuestra Señora de Atocha | Potosí, Upper Peru | 1622 Tierra Firme Fleet | From a Documented Class Factor 1.0 Bar | 2,380/2,400 Fine | Treasure Salvors Certificate #85A-S895
This piece is something particularly special: it is a genuine silver bar slice cut from the full Atocha ingot pictured and documented on the accompanying Treasure Salvors Certificate of Authenticity. The certificate does not represent the small slice as though it were the original complete bar; rather, it documents the full 93-troy-pound Atocha silver bar from which this piece was subsequently cut. The certificate identifies the original ingot as TSI #85A-S895, Tag #0369, Manifest #3011, Class Factor 1.0, with a recorded fineness of 2,380/2,400. This distinction makes the piece especially interesting: what you are holding is a physical fragment of a much larger, individually documented Atocha ingot.
The original bar was an enormous piece of Spanish colonial bullion, weighing 93 troy pounds, 5.28 troy ounces according to the 1986 Treasure Salvors certificate. Its markings were applied as part of the Spanish colonial bullion system, recording information such as its manifest number, assayer/fineness, ownership or shipping marks, and taxation. A Class Factor 1.0 is the highest classification used for recovered Atocha silver bars and was reserved for examples whose surviving markings were strong enough to connect the bar to the ship's manifest, including a clear fineness mark, tally/manifest number and date or other significant identifying marks.
The 2,380/2,400 fineness recorded on the certificate corresponds to approximately 99.17% silver, an extraordinarily high degree of purity. The original bar also preserves the physical evidence of its production and inspection in the Spanish New World: the assayer's “bite” was removed to test the metal, while the surviving stamped marks transformed a rough cast ingot into an officially recorded piece of imperial bullion. These marks were essential because the bars represented enormous amounts of wealth belonging to merchants, shippers and the Crown. The Atocha's silver cargo was therefore not simply treasure—it was a carefully documented financial system cast into metal.
Then, on September 6, 1622, the Nuestra Señora de Atocha was lost in a hurricane in the Florida Keys. The great Tierra Firme fleet was carrying an enormous cargo of American silver and gold back toward Spain when the disaster scattered the fleet and sent the Atocha and its cargo to the seabed. More than three centuries later, Mel Fisher and Treasure Salvors located the Atocha's famous Mother Lode on July 20, 1985. The Treasure Salvors certificate accompanying this piece was issued only about a year later, on September 15, 1986, making it an early piece of the documentation surrounding the recovery and distribution of the Atocha treasure.
What makes this particular artifact so compelling is the connection between the little piece of silver in your hand and the enormous bar pictured on the certificate. The photograph and measurements on the 1986 document preserve the identity and history of the complete 93-pound Class Factor 1.0 ingot, while this slice allows a collector to actually own a physical fragment of that documented bar. It is, quite literally, a piece of one of the Atocha's great silver ingots—Spanish colonial bullion that was cast in the New World, marked and recorded for its journey across the Atlantic, lost beneath the Florida Keys in 1622, recovered by Mel Fisher in 1985, and ultimately divided into smaller pieces so that its story could continue in collections around the world.