Our work on the ATOCHA site has become so demanding on our crews that we’re going to have to postpone any visits to the site at this time, Our finding the main pile depends on everybody’s best efforts.

Mel

Fleet Beat

WOW~ The “Treasure Coast” season has started out with a bang! ~Roy Volker, working on Corrigan’s Wreck has discovered 450 silver coins and a portion of a very ela­borate silver breast plate.

John Brandon got into some K’ang Hai china, coins, musket balls, and then an extraordinary piece of the bow (see reprint from the Miami Herald) of the San Ramon (Corrigan’s).

Not to be outdone, Harold 1101— den discovered coins and a silver button, Bob Marx silver coins, and Don Anderson and Kortejarvi found artifacts, gold dust, and a gold nugget on the Rio Mar.

With these great finds we man­aged to set a new record and hit the Miami Herald twice in one day with major stories. WHAT A WAY TO BEGIN! GOOD GOING, GUYS!

20TH CENTURY CHICANERY

Back in the early ‘70’s, I received a phone call from a woman in another state who asked if I could evaluate a Spanish coin for her. It seems that while vacationing in the Florida Keys in the 1930’s, she and her husband had discovered a Spanish coin in an almost closed clam shell. Not until the death of her husband some 40 years later did it occur to her to have the coin evaluated. She had no knowledge of what it was, so she took it to a coin dealer and was told the most he could offer for this •‘run of the mill” coin was $50.00.

She described the coin as best she could and I had a suspicion that the coin could have consider­ably more value. She sent it to me and when it arrived my suspicions were confirmed. As I gazed on its sea—tarnished beauty, I marveled at its wonderful state of preserva­tion. The “Pillars of Hercules” gleamed and the encircling banners with “Plus Ultra” were visible, as were the two globes signifying the uniting of the Old World with the New. Below the engraved sea was the magic date 1732. On the reverse was the crest of Ring Philip V and the mint mark of the Mexico city mint. The tulip design on the milled edge confirmed the identification of the coin as one of the first issue of “minted” coins in the New World, most of which had been lost in the 1733 Spanish Fleet disaster. As one of the most beautiful and rare coins in the world, its value was between $3,000 and $5,000 and would later double.

Was the dealer uninformed or dishonest? It little matters. What does matter is that the tightly knit world of coin dealers has attempted to control the prices of sea—salvaged coins since the early sixties, when we found the first of the 1715 coins.

The evaluation we have placed on our coins has been accepted by the IRS for donation purposes. Enough said?

——Bleth Mcflaley