Huge hoard of silver found shipwrecked from World War II. Imagine that! http://news.yahoo.com/48-tons-silve...shipwreck-202726264--abc-news-topstories.html
New York Times story http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/19/w...recovered-from-a-ship-sunk-by-nazis.html?_r=1
Very interesting. I think with this new technology we will see more recoveries in the near future. I wonder how much silver and gold bullion are laying in shipwrecks? Enough to skew markets? I imagine for certain coins it will affect markets, but not sure there is enough generic bullion to do much.
Was watching this on the news 10 minutes ago as soon as I seen heard it on the headline I knew someone would post about it here
Very interesting. I read recently about another vessel that was torpedoed by a German U-boat off Cape Cod during World War II while carrying a couple billion (yes, billion) in platinum. I think the story was on the Huffington post?
I could see some of this hitting the open market as "shipwreck" pieces for double the asking price. As great of a find this is, somewhere, there's a company ready to market the bejesus out of them. Real shame.
If there are any coins in there, I'm sure they'll sell them as shipwreck coins. But the bullion bars in the photos, I can't imagine anyone would pay twice melt value for a +/- 25 pound bullion bar.
48 tons is a fart in a stadium....surprisingly the bars aren't all tarnished. Wonder if the bars will ever hit the open market, no doubt the british will claim it. Hopefully that US company already has salvage rights to the wreckage.
True. World production was about 24,000 tons in 2011. Which is good and bad. Good because it means more for me, bad because it means 48 tons won't cause the bottom to fall out on the market... It's all in the articles. They're getting more than their fair share, unlike the guys that recovered the spanish sunken treasure a little while back.
Yep, enough to skew markets by 2.5% approximately, the amount in which markets care about physical metal. That's about a 50 cent price swing potentially.
But the article also states that 240 tons may be recovered by the end if the operation. Approximately 1% of the 2011 total, but still a sizeable amount.
