A British shipwreck with a fortune in silver under the Atlantic Ocean sunk by a torpedo from a German U-Boat in 1941. I don't see notes if the silver is specifically coins or not. Full story here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...n-silver-on-board-discovered-in-Atlantic.html
They just know where the ship is now, the silver is somewhere deep inside the holds, about 3 miles down. I am guessing the silver wont hit the market for some time yet.
I imagine that the recovery effort for this particular ship got put on the front burner when silver prices exploded. They had to have known it was there all these years, waiting... It just wasn't cost effective until now.
True of many things. I just read an article in the Journal saying we have pumped 1 trillion barrels of oil so far as humans, and there are 1.4 trillion known economically available oil. However, there are 5 trillion more barrels of oil known that is just not economical today to retrieve. Higher price WILL pump that oil, though. Same with a lot of PM in the earth, higher prices will increase quantity available.
The story says 240 tons of silver, iron and tea. Wonder how much of that is silver. My guess is that the tea has gone bad.
Read the first sentence of the article. The folks that found it are the ones that find most every deep sea treasure, the Odyssey. There are certainly archaeologists on board.
"Archaeologist" is a word that a publication like The Telegraph will throw around rather easily. Try this on for size: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odyssey_Marine_Exploration Archaeologists would either carefully excavate the site, or leave it. Now don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with Odyssey Marine. If they're willing to do the work to get down there and recover material, they should be allowed to do so. I just think that calling them archaeologists is a bit of a misnomer.
also the people who recover the silver are allowed to keep 80% of what they recover. would this have an impact on silver prices?
The 80% thing was surely negotiated. There is an insurance company with a stake in the cargo, and in this case they did well to accept what they could considering the expense of recovery. If the recovery was easier, the insurance company would have negotiated a higher stake for themselves. When this stuff does hit the market, and it will, silver value will be affected somewhat. How much I doubt anyone really knows. It might have to do with how fast they dump it on the market. If they were smart, and could afford it, they'd dump it slow.
Lloyds of London has been known to throw it's weight around and fight very hard for it's stake in marine recovery, even on wrecks they paid out on hundreds of years ago. They have international law on their side. When an insurance company is not involved, even sometimes when they are, nations have been known to lay claim to recovered material by where the wreck is located OR the flag flown on the ship when it went down. I'd say these guys did well for 80%... but again, considering the expense of deep sea recovery, they held all the cards.
