Posted on 05/19/2007 6:51:35 PM PDT by mission9
Investors are dancing in the Streets in Tampa, Florida, and it is not even the Gasparilla Festival yet. Treasure salvers occupy a beloved place in Florida lore, and the work of high tech salver Gregg Stem has hit stratospheric heights with today's announcement. In what is believed to be the largest collection of coins ever excavated from a shipwreck, Odyssey Marine Exploration (Amex symbol OMR) has recovered over 500,000 silver coins weighing more than 17 tons, hundreds of gold coins, ......
(Excerpt) Read more at associatedcontent.com ...
Great job by them!
Odyssey has been searching for the wreck of the HMS Sussex, an 80 gun 2d rate ship of the line lost in 1693. She was carrying a large treasure of silver and gold coins to the Duke of Savoy as a bribe to secure his support in England’s war against France.
The Sussex was lost near Gibralter, not England, but I suspect that this is the ship that was found. Odyssey has an agreement in place with the British government to split the treasure.
Seven to ten million dollars in bullion, before expenses.
17 tons * 32000 ounces * $13 per ounce => $7,000,000 and change. Assume the gold is one or two million.
More if they can sell to collectors with a premium but then their marketing costs will expand. The more they market, the less rare it is.
A guy that works with me used to work for these people up until about a year ago...gave it up because the $ wasn't so good and there was (and still is) a lot of Katrina/Rita clean up to do here in the Gulf of Mexico...and he confirmed that you are correct.
freaky looking volume pattern for announcement day.........if I sold short, I’d be thinking seriously about shorting this one, and spend the weekend trying to learn how much gold is with it......all of those buckets were NOT full of coins, they were mostly empty, if you noticed them being moved by hand and even the pallets-full-of-buckets on that teeny little hi-lo couldn’t have been full of silver.....
I heard this story mentioned on TV this afternoon. They said the find could be worth $500 million.
I’m not sure whether they’ve found it or not. There was a huge row in Spain over this as it’s apparently in Spanish waters. Spain sent out patrolboats to controll that area and patriotic Spanish fisherman threatened to ram the Odyssey.
How would the (UN) Law of the Sea Treaty effect treasure hunters if Bush get his way and the treaty is ratified by Congress?
I have no idea. I’m a German. Usually my country is on the very forefront when it comes to things like Kyoto, LOST or banning submunition (<- banned recently for our Army). Here we are all holding hands and dancing under the rainbow.
the melt value is immaterial. What is material is the value established by other recoveries like the Republic or the Atocha. Collectors pay a premium over numismatic value.
They expect to get several hundred dollars per coin, above and beyond any bullion value as they are colonial era coins.
Some will probably exceed 1k individually. The group also has plans to sell them in dribs and drabs so as not to tank the market for these type of coins.
Good report, thanks. This suggests that “Black Swan” is a merchant ship, if a warship, then the owning government would have a claim. If Odyssey is successful with this, and with the Sussex recovery, the world of underwater archaeology and salvage will never be the same.
It is a shell game. Collectors are aging and not being sufficiently replaced to make up for the demographic shift. The marketeers can only fleece so much stupid money at a time before people with money catch on to the game. The melt value is the bottom line. The rest is hype when there is that much available. Of course there is some stupid money to be had, so they will actualize above melt value. The smart money knows not to buy these coins at the large markups. They will come down in price as they flood the market.
In that range/produce, every salesperson/dealer expects/hopes to get several hundred dollars per coin over what they pay for it. It is a shell game. Don't be caught seatless when the music stops. The recovered SS Central America hoard coins were poor investments at the marketed price. With improved technology to recover wrecked ships there will be more of these coins coming on the market than there are wealthy collectors willing to pay the price, you know people who don't have to worry about the price of gasoline or schoold bills for children.
>> Here we are all holding hands and dancing under the rainbow.
LOL!
It’s good you have the proper attitude about things.
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