Tin Ingots sell for over £40,000

As a family business established in Cornwall since 1978, we were delighted at the success of last month's selling of multiple mining artefacts. We are taking a look back at our most recent specialist Antiques & Interiors sale, which saw a remarkable and unique collection of Cornish tin ingots reach a collective hammer price of over £40,000.

The collection contained very rare pieces, included 10 ingots salvaged from the shipwrecks of the SS Liverpool, the SS Cheerful and HMS Abergavenny which went down in 1805 off the coast of Portland, with the loss of 260 lives. The Captain of HMS Abergavenny John Wordsworth, was the beloved brother of the poet William Wordsworth who was devastated by his death.

William Wordsworth (1770—1850)

His loss prompted William Wordsworth to write three elegies between May and July of 1805 titled “To the Daisy”, “I only look’d for pain and grief” and “Distressful gift! this Book receives”.

The second poem includes the line:

“Sea, Ship, drown’d, shipwreck—so it came, the meek, the brave, the good was gone; he who had been our living John was nothing but a name.”

The ingot from HMS Abergavenny sold for £2400 but other pieces made huge sums like a possibly unique 28lb Charlestown House Cornwall tin ingot which sold for £3400. Cornwall's extraordinary wealth in the 1700s and 1800s came from tin and Cornish tin was traded and shipped all around the world, leaving from local ports, often heading first to Liverpool and from there to markets across the globe. Tin was transported in ingots and it is rare to find them in their original form. The highest price was paid was for an extremely rare pre 1832 tin ingot 'coinage block', recovered near Portreath in Cornwall, which weighs a staggering 378lbs and sold for £5000.