Found Treasure

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The photos don't provide any reference for scale. I'm assuming the coins are tiny. Crazy to think they used to mint coins like this with irregular shapes and no reeding. Made it easier for the crown to eventually debase the mintings I guess.
 

Douglass Beach Wreck​

A 1715 Fleet wreck site located a few miles south of the Fort Pierce Inlet. It is often referred to by its old name, “Colored Beach.” In some early Real Eight Company correspondence, it was referred to as the “Gold Wreck,” and for good reason. Some 3,376 Spanish Colonial gold coins were recovered there in the first two months of their 1964 salvage season. This has been a very productive wreck site for 1715 Fleet related coins and artifacts. This wreck site was the subject of an extensive article written by Jorge Proctor and published in April 2021. The article offers new evidence that this site does not contain the remains of Ubilla’s patache, the Nuestra Senora de las Nieves y las Animus, but rather the remains of his fragitilla, the Santa Rita y las Animus, nicknamed the la Marigeleta.

 

1715 Treasure Fleet GPS Cordinates​

 
Chuck's is actually on the southbside of the inlet. It's expensive, but the broiled shrimp is fantastic.
 
Long-lost Ship Found in the Desert Laden with Gold

The discovery of a ship that disappeared five hundred years ago and was found in a desert in southwest Africa with gold coins aboard has been one of the most exciting archaeological finds of recent years.

The Bom Jesus (The Good Jesus) was a Portuguese vessel that set sail from Lisbon, Portugal, on Friday, March 7, 1533. Its fate was unknown until 2008 when its remains were discovered in the desert of Namibia during diamond mining operations near the coast of the African nation.

When it sank in a fierce storm, it was on its way to India laden with treasures like gold and copper ingots. Two-thousand pure gold coins and tens of thousands of pounds of copper ingots were discovered on the Bom Jesus, almost all intact.

Read the rest:

 

The Hunt for a 17th Century Sunken Treasure​

May 14, 2023


7:08

As a child Carl Allen came to the Bahamas, to the small island of Walker's Cay, for the fishing. Today, the retired businessman is fishing for gold, silver and gems from the wreck of a Spanish treasure cargo ship that sank in 1656. Correspondent Lee Cowan takes a deep dive into the lore of hidden treasure, and the drive of a man living a dream.

Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TheOutdoorswithCarlAllen/videos
 
Long-lost Ship Found in the Desert Laden with Gold

The discovery of a ship that disappeared five hundred years ago and was found in a desert in southwest Africa with gold coins aboard has been one of the most exciting archaeological finds of recent years.

The Bom Jesus (The Good Jesus) was a Portuguese vessel that set sail from Lisbon, Portugal, on Friday, March 7, 1533. Its fate was unknown until 2008 when its remains were discovered in the desert of Namibia during diamond mining operations near the coast of the African nation.

When it sank in a fierce storm, it was on its way to India laden with treasures like gold and copper ingots. Two-thousand pure gold coins and tens of thousands of pounds of copper ingots were discovered on the Bom Jesus, almost all intact.

Read the rest:

😄From what minimal info i can find, it seems kinda weird that the mainscream general consensus asserts of a "desert" supposedly being the location in which it was discovered.

Sorta [mis-]leads the [pseudo-]info consumer towards conceptualizing of an actual desert scenario and thusly a mystery as to how a ship could possibly land in a desert.

When in Actuality, it sank off the coast and has been underwater up until a mining corporation "reclaimed" that area off the coast, at which point they basically buried it.

Even if they hadn't buried it, and it was found in such a location, i think it's blatantly misleading for anyone to suggest it had anything to do with a desert.
 
Guessing whomever controls the mining corporation probably doesn't want to much attention brought upon the environmental damage caused by mining and would rather the gullible masses believe a desert fairytale instead.

To maintain whatever status quo which allows the corporation to freely take advantage, destroy and pollute that area of south western Namibian coastline.

They surely would seek to avoid potentially facing public screecher mobs and possibly leading to them being forced to cough up millions.
...
 
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😄From what minimal info i can find, it seems kinda weird that the mainscream general consensus asserts of a "desert" supposedly being the location in which it was discovered.

Sorta [mis-]leads the [pseudo-]info consumer towards conceptualizing of an actual desert scenario and thusly a mystery as to how a ship could possibly land in a desert.

When in Actuality, it sank off the coast and has been underwater up until a mining corporation "reclaimed" that area off the coast, at which point they basically buried it.

Even if they hadn't buried it, and it was found in such a location, i think it's blatantly misleading for anyone to suggest it had anything to do with a desert.

Or, in reality, water levels dropped significantly even in just the last 500 years.
 
Back on topic...........

From the link:

Fifty-one days. That’s how long it took for Chelsea Gotta of Pella, Iowa, to find the treasure chest containing $25,000 that two Utahns hid in the state’s great outdoors for the fourth year in a row.

The chest was masked under heaps of pine cone dust at the base of a tree off Mueller Park Trail in Bountiful. Gotta almost gave up before she found it. In the midst of her third trip to Utah for the hunt, she knew she needed to start her 16-hour drive back home soon to make work on Tuesday.

“My time was running out. I was getting frustrated, I was crying,” she said. “I’m like ‘I’ve wasted all this time. This is ridiculous. What am I doing?’”

More:

 
In the backyard.

 
Link to Treasure Beaches Report. Some neat stuff here.



Here's a link to the older stuff.

 
Edited 10/8 due to pulled video.

17th Century Silver Bar Recovered off of Sunken Shipwreck!​

Sep 5, 2023


16:12

Tune in to see the team find and recover a 17th Century Silver Bar off of the Ship Wreck, Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas! We head to the Bahamas Maritime Museum to learn what our Archaeologists discovered about the Silver Bar!
 
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17th Century Silver Bar Recovered off a Sunken Shipwreck!​

Aug 25, 2023


16:12

S1Ep5 Bahama Banks:
Recovering Lost LegaciesTune in to see the team find and recover a 17th Century Silver Bar off of the Ship Wreck, Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas! We head to the Bahamas Maritime Museum to learn what our Archaeologists discovered about the Silver Bar!

Holy Senora!! Without the backstory, I accidentally found a piece of eight while adjusting my scuba tank while sitting in 20'. Mel Fisher ID'd it for me (really nice guy) it was from the Nuestra Senora de las Maravillas (Our New Lady of Marvels). I had a jeweler put a holder on it:
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(*snork) This being a gold bug site, there is gonna be a coupla folks here that would look at the picture above and think:

"Just a fargin minnit, here: We ALL know that a cube of gold a mere 14" on a side weighs ONE TON!!"

The opening of that jug is more than 14". More like a cubit (19") And the jug is at least four feet high. Just a cylinder of the gold coins 14" diameter (not adding the volume of the bulging sides) would weigh at least four tons.

So they got a coupla itty bitty physics problems, two wit:

1. Add the fat part of the container's content and you get another two tons at least.

2. WTF kind of clay did these folks use to make those jugs that could hold six tons of gold coins?

3. They are lifting it out a a hole with a fargin tie-down strap? Rilly?

4. The gold coins laid under all that dirt in an open container without getting even a tad dusty?

So I tried to find that double-jug "find" pictured in the collage of grave robbing finds -- No luck. The grave finds are doggone interesting for the most part. Burial with the owners' wealth was standard in the Fertile Crescent (eg: Mesopotamia). It looks like a lot of (clandestine) work involved to find and dig the stuff up.

Turkey/Syria area grave robbing is not my cuppa, but I would most ricky-tick watch.
 

Is There Sunken Treasure Beneath the Treacherous Currents of Hell Gate?​

Just off the coast of Astoria, Queens, at the confluence of the Harlem and East Rivers, is a narrow tidal channel. Hell Gate. Its fast currents change multiple times a day and it used to be riddled with rocks just beneath the surface. Even today, visitors to Randall’s Island Park can see the swirling churn and watch pleasure boaters struggle through. American author Washington Irving wrote an essay about it: “Woe to the unlucky vessel that ventures into its clutches.”

But many a vessel did venture into those clutches over the centuries. Traversing it could save sailors navigating between New York Harbor and Southern New England days of travel around Long Island. This expediency often came at a cost. Hell Gate is the final resting place of literally hundreds of ships. Most of them are forgotten but one continues to captivate. Because down there, under the minor maelstroms, is the promise of gold.

The East River runs up from New York Harbor with Manhattan on one side and first Brooklyn then Queens on the other. At Randall’s Island it splits. To the west, it becomes the Harlem River, which skirts around the top of Manhattan to join the Hudson. In the other direction, it connects to the entirety of Long Island Sound—but it’s easy to miss that this connection comes only via a single, slim channel. Each time the tide turns, the Atlantic forces its way through this passage in one direction or the other, with the discharge of the Harlem River adding to the chaos.

More:

 

Is There Sunken Treasure Beneath the Treacherous Currents of Hell Gate?​

Just off the coast of Astoria, Queens, at the confluence of the Harlem and East Rivers, is a narrow tidal channel. Hell Gate. Its fast currents change multiple times a day and it used to be riddled with rocks just beneath the surface. Even today, visitors to Randall’s Island Park can see the swirling churn and watch pleasure boaters struggle through. American author Washington Irving wrote an essay about it: “Woe to the unlucky vessel that ventures into its clutches.”

But many a vessel did venture into those clutches over the centuries. Traversing it could save sailors navigating between New York Harbor and Southern New England days of travel around Long Island. This expediency often came at a cost. Hell Gate is the final resting place of literally hundreds of ships. Most of them are forgotten but one continues to captivate. Because down there, under the minor maelstroms, is the promise of gold.

The East River runs up from New York Harbor with Manhattan on one side and first Brooklyn then Queens on the other. At Randall’s Island it splits. To the west, it becomes the Harlem River, which skirts around the top of Manhattan to join the Hudson. In the other direction, it connects to the entirety of Long Island Sound—but it’s easy to miss that this connection comes only via a single, slim channel. Each time the tide turns, the Atlantic forces its way through this passage in one direction or the other, with the discharge of the Harlem River adding to the chaos.

More:

EVER kewl. My Daddy useta dive offa the rocks at Hell Gate back in the 19teens. He was born in 1902, lived right by the water there. He would describe to me how he watched the Hell Gate Bridge being built.
 
The photos don't provide any reference for scale. I'm assuming the coins are tiny. Crazy to think they used to mint coins like this with irregular shapes and no reeding. Made it easier for the crown to eventually debase the mintings I guess.
Just saw this above. The reason why the "cobs" are "rough as a cob" is simply due to mass production.

Here's what was going down: There was gold coming in from all over to mints like Potosi. There was so much gold to be transformed into coins that the standard procedure was to drag a line in the sand and pour molten metal in it.

The long bars thus made were sliced into coin thickness, and the wonky disk would be placed on a steel form.

A blunt bar with a steel obverse engraved in it would be placed on top of the disk, and then hit with a hammer -- thereby forming the reverse/obverse detail.

Then the "cob" would be weighed, and clipped with a chisel until it was the right weight. This was done millions of times. This WEIGHT requirement made all the crude coins equal, despite shape, size, or thickness variations.

It was the fastest way to get a measured amount of coinage into ships to take back to the Old World.
 
Posted this on a different forum (not gim) 11 years ago. Short, fun vid.

Art McKee: "The Father of Modern Treasure Hunting" at the History of Diving Museum​


3:30

The evolution of modern salvage diving can be understood through life of one man. Arthur McKee Jr., considered the "father of modern treasure hunting," was the first to recognize that the reef-riddled Florida Keys provided a precious landscape for wrecked ships carrying even more precious cargo. He would be the first to salvage these ships, and in the process, become a pioneer in the salvage industry and the history of diving.
 
I visited the original McKee Museum 50 years ago. Then it closed for quite a while.

Aha. Herself looked at the pic of the new museum with McKee Jr. She said: "Tell them about how McKee stuck it to the greedy lawmakers."

So here goes:

The legal vipers got McKee in such a fargin bind over the thousands of pieces of 8 -- wanting most, if not all he found because of where he found it that he went out and got himself filmed throwing them back into the ocean at random, while stating to the vipers: "OK, this time YOU find them." <-- TINS
 
Two Roman coin hoards were declared treasure on Monday 9th October by the Assistant Coroner for North Wales (East & Central), Kate Robertson

 

Colombia plans to recover up to $20B in sunken treasure from 'Holy Grail of shipwrecks​

Colombia is working to speed up the recovery of as much as $20 billion of sunken treasure from a centuries-old shipwreck as a U.S. company sues for half of the findings.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro told officials to exhume the Spanish galleon San José from the Caribbean Sea before his term ends in 2026, Minister of Culture Juan David Correa told Bloomberg in a phone interview last week.

 
Not gold or silver.

A homeowner planned to throw away a painting hanging in her kitchen — it turned out to be a 13th-century masterpiece worth $25 million​


Discovered hanging in a kitchen during a house clearance in provincial France and destined for the trash, "Christ Mocked" by the Florentine master Cimabue has been declared a national treasure and will find its new home at the world-renowned Louvre Museum in Paris.

The painting was stumbled upon during a routine house clearance in 2019, The Times reports. "Christ Mocked," initially believed to be of no value, was eventually sold at auction for a staggering $25 million.

The owner, a woman in her nineties, was utterly unaware that she had been looking at an art treasure every day, believing it to be a worthless icon from Russia, and she planned to put it in the trash.

More:

 
Roughly 30 miles off the coast of Key West, Florida, sits a ship called The Dare. Its exact location is a closely guarded secret because, deep below the crystal-clear water, through hundreds of years of sand and shells, the crew believes there is a pile of sunken treasure.

The Dare is owned and operated by the company Mel Fisher's Treasures. It’s part of a fleet of salvage ships that have come to these waters for half a century searching for lost riches from the Nuestra Señora de Atocha, a Spanish galleon loaded with gold, silver and gemstones that sank off the Florida coast in a hurricane in 1622.

 
searcher: I own a piece of eight I found totally by accident while adjusting my diving gear as I was sitting on snowy white sand in about 20' of water. (the tank had slipped out) My right pinky fingle bumped it. I turned to look what it was, and damned near catted on the spot.

Began to whoosh sand away with my hands; the sand was only about 8" deep to white bed coral. After a while, another guy from the boat came up to me and gave me the WTF? sign. I held out the coin.

HIS eyes were now saucer-sized. He began swooping, too. Finally, a third guy came down, looked, went up. Then EVERYBODY came down to swoop sand. We burned two tanks each at about an hour a tank looking.

Mine was the only coin. I stopped in to talk to Mel Fisher about it, and he immediately identified if as a coin from the Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas. Even showed me the mint mark (Potosi), assayer's mark, and date (1655).

THEN he grilled me as to where I found it. He nodded, saying I was really lucky, since it was what he called a "dump coin"... treasure spilled out as the ship busted up. As the treasure spilled, it lightened the ship. The ship was pushed on by the high wind, laying a scattered trail.

Here it is:
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Persistence and 'a little bit of craziness' keeps Treasure Coast shipwreck salvor afloat​

Treasure hunting is in Michael Perna's blood.

"There’s just really no doing anything else,” the professional historic shipwreck salvor said.

Years ago, he researched how to get out on the treasure salvage boats that dotted about a 35-mile stretch of ocean off the Treasure Coast. It's where the 1715 fleet of 11 Spanish ships sunk in a hurricane July 31, 1715, later inspiring the Treasure Coast's name. The treasure-laden ships are now strewn about the ocean floor from Sebastian to the St. Lucie Nuclear Plant.

Perna, of Vero Beach, got his dive certification, wound up on a boat and never looked back.

He’s been scouring the ocean floor ever since, for more than 20 years. He's found 1,500 coins, a candelabra set and a solid silver lion, among many other artifacts.

For the past five years, he's been working a mile-long area off Ambersand Beach in north Indian River County.

More:

 
For those on FB this is a neat site. It's a public group.

 
It's too cold now and the water is rough. Best time is the summer minus any hurricanes.
 
{Evil grin}

I have stolen Christmas this year fer sure:
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Hoard of American and Russian Gold Coins Found in Polish Forest

A team of metal detectorists discovered a treasure hoard of American and Russian gold coins in a Polish forest recently.

The detectorists from the Szczecin Search Group Association were conducting a survey to find relics from WW2, in particular, traces of the Battle of Szczec, fought between the Soviet Red Army and the Wehrmacht.

They have found 70 coins deposited in a heavily corroded metal can buried at a depth of approximately 15 to 20 cm’s. The total discovery has been estimated to be worth 100,000 zloty, which is over 24,000 US dollars based on current conversion rates.

More:

 
Business Insider

A hedge fund exec is funding hunts for treasures in shipwrecks at the bottom of the ocean​

  • A 43 year-old hedge fund exec was revealed as one of the world's leading deep-sea treasure hunters.
  • For years he's been funding missions and investing in high-tech tools to discover shipwrecks.
  • Though not technically illegal, shipwreck hunters must register all their discoveries.
A hedge fund executive has been unmasked as one of the world's leading deep-sea shipwreck hunters after a Bloomberg Businessweek investigation uncovered his decades-long hunt for sunken treasure worth billions.

Anthony Clake, a 43-year-old executive at Marshall Wace in London, has not been going to the bottom of the ocean himself, however. He's been investing in and directing high-tech operations to find lost treasures on the ocean floor.

Marshall Wace is one of the world's biggest hedge funds, managing assets worth about $62 billion.

More:

A hedge fund exec is funding hunts for treasures in shipwrecks at …

Coloradan

Cairo

Benmohr
 
^^^^^^^
The guy in the story above (Nick Mead) is an interesting character.




 
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