500 Million in Coins found in Ocean (Tampa Florida)

Breaking news. Does anyone have an update?

 

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ooops I guess it was found a few years ago. Apparently it has been returned to Spain?

 

Are you talking about the Black Swan Project, Peru is fighting to stop it from going to Spain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Swan_Project

 

I knew I lost my coin purse, on the port side of the boat I was on

 

My god, I wonder what planet I was living on that I never heard of this before?

 

The company lost the gold to Spain thanks in part to political pressure from DoJ, beats me why they took the gold to Tampa thinking it will be safe haven when they could have just as well kept in Ariba or Bahamas...

 

It is being returned via a C130 Transport Spanish Air Force plane. There was a paper trail from upper US government officials who are helping a political donor whose family once owned a painting prior to WWII that is hanging in a Spanish Museum. The painting will be returned to the heir Southern Californian man, Spain gets the treasure without having to pay the American salvage company anything or NGC for conserving them. This was brought up in the trial to support the lack of help from the US Federal Government. The American firm claimed the ship was on a commercial venture rather than being on a Spanish Naval run. The same American firm has worked with other governments (mostly UK) to
salvage other wrecks. The Spanish ship was sunk in a battle in international waters. Florida with the number of wrecks off its shores has the best background of cases being settled fairly between all parties. Not in this case in my ever so humble opinion.

 

any nation that claim sovereignty right over property that orginally born from them automatically has claim unlesss found by court to have sold it or traded it for some purpose..loll.. thats why me say keep the recipt... thats all

 

huumm pirates me mateee arrrrrrrhhhhhhhhh

 

Interesting read, thanks for the link. That must suck to do all the recovery work and then have to turn it all over to someone else.

 

Yeah I live nearby and this has been a huge story since it happened.
Hear about it every night when I turn on the news now.
I would imagine Spain would do SOMETHING for the people who recovered the treasure.
At least pay for the expenses they incurred. ****, you have 500 Million in treasure the least you could do is pay the people a few.
Spain should be embarassed to display the treasure in any museum.
'Look at the treasure we effortlessly took away from the people who rigorously worked for it.'

 

right!
Treasure that I'm pretty sure they would have never seen again otherwise!

 

Yeah, the whole thing stinks. The problem is all of this stuff hinges on maritime law which has not been updated in centuries. That is why the outcomes frequently seem unfair to modern people.

To say after centuries of not looking for something that Spain had not given up title to it is preposterous on its face. At the very least restitution of costs should have been required.

 

No treasure hunter will ever notify Spain of any future finds now.

 

..and if not required, then graciously offered. And if not that, then a gift in kind..a reward of some type..

 

The worst part is that coin collectors like us will reward Spain for their theft by buying the coins from them. Personally I wish coni collectors worldwide joined together and simply boycotted all of these coins, so as to not reward Spain's actions. I for one promise to never buy a coin from this wreck.

 

I don't know why they would - and I'm just curious, I wonder how much was kept as, you know, a souvenir!

 

In fact thanks to this incident lot of treasure hunting vessels now operate illegally with vessels tagged under Caribbean nation and manned by Asian crew. They simply mop up any treasure they find and send it to melt in India/China, in fact there are few legit colonial shipwreck coins that shown up in bazaars there because once in a while the coin gets stolen before it gets melted down.

 

Please don't mistake this for a political post, it's certainly not intended to provoke anyone or score points.....

There are rumors flying around the blogosphere that the reason for the inexplicable court ruling and unprecedented involvement of The DoJ and State Dept, both of whom initially supported the salvage company is rank corruption.

A prominent CA Democrat has claims to a valuable painting stolen from his family by the Nazis and now in Spain. He called in some political favors, made a few "donations" and hey presto, despite the fact that Spain has no credible claim to the treasure they are awarded all of it without any order to compensate the salvagers for their costs, including court ordered custodial security and almost $500,000 in emergency conservation. The painting is on it's way to California.

I heard the interview with their COO this afternoon and came away with the impression that he or their attorney was the source for this information. Make of it what you will, I know it's not properly sourced yet but I share the info with you all for whatever it's worth.