I'm a few days late on this news but Blue Water Ventures International has chosen NCS/NGC to conserve coins found on the shipwreck S.S Pulaski which sank in 1838 which is the earliest known American shipwreck with newly minted U.S gold coins. They have announced that they have recovered Mexican, British, American and Spanish coinage which adds up to $100,000 but they estimate that there is 25 million dollars still on the wreck. -=-=-Links-=-=- https://www.ngccoin.com/news/article/6524/SS-Pulaski/ https://player.vimeo.com/video/252700247 https://www.news4jax.com/news/jacksonville-explorers-make-major-shipwreck-discovery
I had the very great pleasure of viewing the artifacts that were recovered from the SS Republic shipwreck as they were being conserved at the (old) NGC office in Sarasota. When I viewed the ship's bell with USS TENNESSEE emblazoned across the top, it literally took my breath away. Chris
It will be interesting to see how many classic head half and quarter eagles surface. Some of these are considered great rarities: 1834 crosslet 4, 1838C, 1838D $5 and 1838C $2.50. Wouldn't take very many of these in mint state to bring prices down. 1838's could be iffy though depending on when they were released from the mints and when the ship went down. Cal
I know that the odds of finding a shipwreck are pretty slim (anyone have statistics?), and the guys who *do* find them put in years and years of research on top of the months and years of physically arduous and probably dangerous searching, but... Dang. Sure makes me want to take up SCUBA diving!
You could always look up some know shipwrecks and give it a shot. There’s no way they could grab every single item that was on the boat. I’m sure there’s a couple of coins just outside the ship that could have been missed.
Finding and retrieving a shipwreck is difficult, but rewarding psychologically if successful. Stressful part is dealing with governments that want to claim it as cultural heritage and insurance companies and descendants of original ship and cargo owners who say it belongs to them. No matter that you did the work and the wreck might have disappeared forever if you hadn't. Often the law and courts are on their side. Best defense is expensive, up-front research and legal work before salvage begins. Even then you may lose it all in court. Ask Odyssey Marine. They recovered $500 million worth of coins from the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes. The ship, which belonged to Spain, was sunk off the coast of Portugal in 1804 by the British. The government of Spain sued for the coins in a U.S. court and won. Cal
Good part for Blue Water is that North Carolina and decedents are not challenging the find so Blue Water has all rights to the wreck.
How it's looking right now, U.S. Currency being recovered is gonna to be extremely expensive unless they find loads of it like the El Cazador which I'm very doubtful since it seems the ship was carrying wealthy passengers, mostly slave owners from Georgia to Baltimore but no mention of carrying cargo for the banks but you never know maybe it was a secret deal under the table. I'm more interested in the Spanish Reales since it was still legal tender to use foreign currency as form of payment and at this point in history, the Reale was king.
I would be interested in any of the coins recovered (historically speaking) as long as they weren't to pitted from corrosion.
Chris, When did you get to see it? Sounds awesome. Did they let you take any pictures of the bell? Joe
IIRC, it was in 2005 and the "suits" from Odyssey Marine were there to take possession of the shipwreck coins. There was about $50 million in gold (slabs) stacked on the floor for the accounting. It was while I was waiting during this time that the head of security asked if I would like to see some of the artifacts. I didn't have a camera with me, but I doubt that they would have allowed it anyway. Chris