Captain Kidds Treasure 'silver' (?) ingot

[CutlassCollector]

Originally Posted by Jim McDougall

I found in reading through some material there was indeed 'lead sheeting' applied to hulls to shield from shot, sounds surprising but your idea apparently not far fetched!

Ah - the radiation shielding was just a comment on the fact that x-ray examination of the ingot would not be possible.

Your research into the markings on ballast lead was very interesting.
I was always doubtful that it could be passed off as silver. But lead and silver do have similarities - silver is very close in weight to lead (7% lighter) and silver oxidises to black and of course could be painted, so possible. The Lone Ranger (must do a link to your nostalgia thread - still looking for that sixgun) and various werewolf hunters can testify that silver makes just as good bullets as lead.

But (google again) lead is much softer than silver at near the bottom of the hardness table while silver is mid range. So we can protect ourselves from future scams by merely digging a thumbnail into the ingot before parting with any cash!