CHINA, A GOLD RECTANGULAR SYCEE INGOT, Qing dynasty, ca. 1750, 366.000g. Chinese countermarks on the top and the bottom. Scarce. Lightly toned. Extremely fine. Chaponnière & Hess-Divo 2010 (1) lot 1685; possibly from the Nanking shipwreck On Monday 3 January 3 1752, the Dutch East India Company, (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, VOC) ship Geldermalsen, struck a reef on her return journey to the Netherlands and sank in the South China Sea. Of the crew 32 survived and 80 went down with the ship and her cargo of tea, raw silk, textiles, dried wares, groceries, lacquer and porcelain. The celebrated 1986 Amsterdam auction disposed of over 100,000 pieces of Chinese blue-and-white porcelain and 124 10 Tael gold sycees, eighteen of which were shoe-shaped and 106 of this rectangular shape.