Shipwreck yields historic riches — $500M worth

CNN: Shipwreck yields historic riches — $500M worth

TAMPA, Florida (AP) — Deep-sea explorers said Friday they have mined what could be the richest shipwreck treasure in history, bringing home 17 tons of colonial-era silver and gold coins from an undisclosed site in the Atlantic Ocean.

Estimated value: $500 million.

A jet chartered by Tampa-based Odyssey Marine Exploration landed in the United States recently with hundreds of plastic containers brimming with coins raised from the ocean floor, Odyssey co-chairman Greg Stemm said. The more than 500,000 pieces are expected to fetch an average of $1,000 each from collectors and investors.

"For this colonial era, I think (the find) is unprecedented," said rare coin expert Nick Bruyer, who examined a batch of coins from the wreck. "I don't know of anything equal or comparable to it."

Citing security concerns, the company declined to release any details about the ship or the wreck site Friday. Stemm said a formal announcement will come later, but court records indicate the coins might come from a 400-year-old ship found off England.

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The news is timely for Odyssey, the only publicly traded company of its kind.

The company salvaged more than 50,000 coins and other artifacts from the wreck of the SS Republic off Savannah, Georgia, in 2003, making millions. But Odyssey posted losses in 2005 and 2006 while using its expensive, state-of-the-art ships and deep-water robotic equipment to hunt for the next mother lode.

"The outside world now understands that what we do is a real business and is repeatable and not just a lucky one shot deal," Stemm said. "I don't know of anybody else who has hit more than one economically significant shipwreck."

This is so cool! One of my favorite museums is the Arabia Steamboat Museum here in Kansas City. The steamboat Arabia went down in the Missouri River in 1856. It was a supply ship for settlers and contained almost every kind of everyday good you could think of. The find changed some history books in describing the everyday life of settlers. It is called an 1856 Wal-Mart. It was hunted and recovered twenty years ago by a family who ran a refrigeration business. They are still restoring the goods they found. The family's adventure in recovering the wreck is almost as interesting as the museum.

Ever since I was a kid, I have been interested in archeology and treasure hunting. Now there is a public company to invest in that does this stuff. Mikey may be making some small stock reallocations soon.