In 1958, in Paris, a collector met with Jean Lafaurie, a numismatic scholar. He wanted to show him a hoard of 41 Roman gold coins (35 aurei and 6 multiples) of Gallienus, Claudius Gothicus, Quintillus and Aurelian, most of them mint-state, with traces of marine life still stuck on some specimens. He had acquired them in Corsica and, according to the seller, they had been found in the sea in the mid-19th c. by a man who fished for coral. True or not? Jean Lafaurie published an article about this exceptional hoard, and the coins were dispersed on the international market. Some gold coins of the same kind, with no provenance but known to come from Corsica, surfaced on the market in 1971. In 1985 three friends, Marc Cotoni, Felix and Ange Biancamaria, who were diving for sea urchins, found gold Roman coins on the sea floor, just a few meters from the seaside property of the Biancamarias close to Lava bay, Corsica. They started to sell some in Ajaccio bars, for a very moderate price. One day Felix went to the continent to sell three coins in Nice : a 8 aurei medallion, another one of 4 aurei, and an aureus of Claudius Gothicus. On seeing them, the Nice numismatist called the well-known dealer and expert Jean Vinchon in Paris, and Felix rushed to Paris to meet him. Officially it was an heritage from his late father, and he sold them for 550 000 Francs in cash (at the time, the price of a decent family home with garden in a provincial city). This was just a start. With other friends the discoverers returned to the finding spot and accumulated dozens, hundreds others. They dived for months, used special devices to lift the rocks and get handfuls of gold coins underneath. It was a gold mine. Of course, people noticed that the guys had suddenly become rich and spent really too much in casinos and sports cars, some suspected organized crime while some others paid more attention to this new diving passion, always on the same spot. They even bribed a local customs officer to keep strangers away... In Corsica nobody talks, that's well known, but there is no secret as well. In the numismatic milieu, everybody had noticed all these very rare aurei of the 260s that were hitting the market, and knew they were from Corsica. In 1986 Jean Vinchon organized an auction at Monte Carlo, with 18 of the most beautiful coins from the treasure. The newspaper Corse-Matin broke the omertà and published a front page article about Corsica being robbed of her national heritage. Enter at last the gendarmerie : that case smelled fishy enough, they decided to round-up the divers and their friends, seized 78 gold coins, nobody believed the heritage story and the guys were sentenced in 1995 to 18 months in jail (suspended) and a 250 000 Francs fine. Two professional numismatists were sentenced also, but... better forget. Most of the coins were already in private collections around the globe. And not only coins, there was also a unique gold phiala, with a Gallienus medallion set in its centre. It had allegedly been exported to the USA covered with paint, then to other countries, and was eventually found in the luggage of Biancamaria when he was arrested at Roissy train station coming back from Brussels, and probably about to fly to somewhere else... Too bad, the central medallion had been removed. The story becomes a bit confused at this stage. In 2005 Marc Cotoni was executed by gunmen, a murder apparently unrelated to the treasure. Felix Biancamaria wrote a book about this adventure, but who else can tell which proportion of truth it contains? It's Corsica... Lately, in 2017, 16 other gold coins have been seized from Corsican arms traffickers who were going to sell them in Asia... but they turned to be cast fakes! According to numismatists, the whole treasure amounted to 1200 to 1400 coins and medallions, of which only 450 could be catalogued, but only 83 recovered : many were identified from foreign sales catalogues, and are now wanted by Interpol. A new trial is due in 2025. The question is of archaeological nature : did this treasure fall in the sea because of a landslide, or did it sink with a ship? The wreck theory is challenged because archaeologists did not find any trace of a wreck (anchor, pottery, ballast) on the spot. According to French law, if the treasure had been buried on land, the Biancamarias can claim it as their property, but if it sunk with a ship, it's the property of the state. Before this question is answered the coins and the gold plate are kept somewhere in secrecy, no Corsican museum being safe enough. The Lava Treasure has now become a popular legend in Corsica. Some of its most iconic pieces are even available in chocolate. A movie, "Inestimable", adapted from Biancamaria's book, is even being released in France this November. I don't think I'll see it (I'll go see the last Miyazaki) because the reviews raised all the red flags that can possibly be raised : it seems to be one of these heavy French low-budget comedies with predictable gags, and the coins in the trailer looked so fake my eyes started bleeding. If you want to show ancient coins in a movie, pleaaase at least use decent reproductions, for example the fakes seized from the arms traffickers, not plastic or chocolate coins!
That's a recurrent problem with the hoards that have been dispersed and have not been examined by scholars: you rely on witnesses only. But you can get an idea watching the market. This treasure contained aurei and medallions minted in the 260s and 270s, a period when aurei are rare. If these otherwise very rare coins start showing up on the market in significant numbers, and if these coins have no actual provenance ("from an old swiss collection made before 1960" is not a valid provenance), you can be 90% sure they were from the Lava hoard.
