Silver Commemorating a Gold Doubloon from British Virgin Islands
I've always been a treasure hunter at heart. Maybe the idea got stuck in my head after watching Raiders of the Ark when I was kid, Indiana Jones was a great character. One of my favorite hobbies has always been searching for sunken treasure or prospecting for gold nuggets. I've had a lot of luck with the nuggets over the years, but the sunken treasures are still evading me.
In 1985 the British Virgin Islands released a series of collectible coins that celebrated the Sunken Treasures of the Caribbean. I've got most of the coins from the series, but I'm still missing one or two. This is one I picked up a long time ago, I don't recall exactly when. It was part of the series so I bought it to fill in a missing coin.
This coin commemorates the gold doubloons lost to the sea as sunken treasure over the centuries. There were a lot of them!
About the coin:
From numista.com
This isn't one of my better pictures I've taken over the years, it was earlier in my coin photography project days. I love this coin series though, it was produced by the Franklin Mint in Wawa, Pennsylvania for the islands. It's not a horribly valuable coin with a melt value of around $26.64 as of today, and might sell for ten dollars more if I were lucky. Still, much more than I paid for it!
I've collected a lot of coins from the British Virgin Islands over the years, they are among my favorite islands in the Caribbean as I've mentioned countless times before...
Now for the interesting part, gold treasure and pirate booty!
Gold Doubloon
forums.collectors.com
A gold doubloon is a Spanish coin produced in the age or pirates that had a value of two Escudos. Since they were double the value of the escudo they became coins called doubloons. These were coins highly sought after by pirates and the wealthy alike. Over the centuries there were millions of these coins lost to the Caribbean Sea from shipwrecks. Thus the appearance on the coin commemorating the Sunken Treasures of the Caribbean.
The one pictured above was minted in Seville, Spain, but was not a shipwreck treasure. It is a great example of what a true doubloon really looks like!
Nuestra Señora de Atocha
pirategoldcoins.com
Some of the treasures recovered from the wreck
Now onto my favorite shipwreck of them all! The Nuestra Señora de Atocha was a Spanish galleon built in 1621 to help haul the treasures plundered from the Americas back to Spain. It met a grim fate one year later, unfortunately. While sailing to Spain loaded down with heavy treasures the fleet ran into an unexpected hurricane. The last two ships in the fleet were smashed against the reefs of the Dry Tortugas and sank depositing a fortune in gold, silver, and gem stones all over the sea floor. Those ill fated ships lost on Sept. 6, 1622 were the Atocha and the Santa Margarita.
The wreck was discovered by Mel Fisher in 1973 and is continuing to be recovered until this day. After an extensive legal battle Fisher was able to keep the fortune. As a result, it is not cheap as it not only had to cover recovery costs but huge legal bills. I've always wanted to own some of the treasure for myself, but it has always been too expensive.
Today I found this Atocha lot for sale on eBay, it's amazing!
eBay.com
A dealer in rare coins out of La Jolla, California (just north of San Diego) is selling this lot of off the shipwreck for $299,000. As much as I would love to buy it, I'm just very short of that much cash at the moment!
If you don't have the cash to buy that stack of sunken treasure, don't lose all hope. Along Florida's treasure coast there is plenty of them buried under the sand along the beaches. Another fleet laden with treasure was lost in 1715 along the reefs of Florida in another hurricane. The treasure was strewn all over the reefs, the sea floor, and much was washed up to the beach and beyond into mangrove swamps. After a strong storm passes through and erodes away the right part of the beach it can expose the sand from 1715 and the priceless gold and silver coins.
I've tried my luck before to no avail along the beaches there. I wouldn't mind heading out with my metal detector again in the future. It's a lot of fun to search for sunken treasure, even if you come up empty handed! If you want to search for sunken treasure it's about the easiest way to do it, and thousands of gold and silver coins have been found there already!
That will wrap up this Monday's post continuing on the Sunken Treasures of the Caribbean series from the British Virgin Island in 1985. Please feel free to leave any comments or questions below, and I want to thank you all for all of your support! Have a great week everyone!
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doubloon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuestra_Se%C3%B1ora_de_Atocha
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1715_Treasure_Fleet
Disclaimer
I am not a financial planner and this isn't financial advice. Please always do your own research before investing your money. You worked hard enough to earn it!
Pictures are mine unless otherwise stated.
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Mel Fisher earned every cent's worth of his historical find.
A very heavy price he paid indeed.
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He really earned every penny, he searched so hard and long to find it. And then racked up huge legal bills... It's no wonder every item from the Atocha costs a fortune!
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I would be ecstatic finding a Gold doubloon!😊
I can imagine how Mel Fisher felt!🤗
Amazing that treasure is still being retrieved to this day!😇
It would be awesome! The treasure was spread out by storms over the centuries and most is buried under deep sand on the bottom on the sea. So moving the sand to get down to the old reef is a lot of work, but that is where the treasure is! That's the problem with diving for treasure, it's almost always deeply buried under sand unless your lucky enough to find something lodged in a reef somewhere.
I can see how people make this a lifelong treasure hunt, it really is an adventure!👍🤗
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I didn't realize they were still recovering stuff from that wreck that is pretty crazy!
There's still a lot of treasure unaccounted for, especially the stuff at the rear of the ship that would have been in the captains quarters. The most valuable items were stored there. The reason it's so hard is that those old reefs from 400 years ago died a long time ago and have been covered with 20-30 feet of sand. So you have to move the sand to get down to the old reefs where the loot would be located. That's why it's likely to be an ongoing search for many years to come!
Wow, that is really interesting! I guess I didn't think about it that way.
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What a find! And what legal expense Mel Fisher had to pay!!!
And so much more to retrieve!!!
We can only watch from the sidelines, @thebighigg.
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That would have been such a fun thing to find @silversaver888 ! The court battles would have seriously sucked, it seems like it went all the way to the Supreme Court. But he won! If you are adventurous you can invest in the project and dive on the wreck recovery team whenever you want. Then what you find you keep! I looked into it once but the cost was $10K at the time, I'm sure it's much, much higher now!
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You seriously looked into it? You mean dive yourself? Well, we can dive together @thebighigg! I love the water!!!
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I also love Indiana Jones, it's one of my favorite movies, learning from your beautiful posts.
Jjeee I'm also a little short on money jjeee otherwise I would buy them too, they're only $299,000 but I have to buy some for food
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Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it @yusmelys ! That treasure is way out of my price range too!
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Thank you so much!
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The story speaks of many treasures that are in the sea, ships that have sunk over the years, even films are made on the subject, this motivates people to go in search of these treasures, some are lucky enough to find them, it is similar to life, there are those who strive to achieve their goals and they succeed
I've always enjoyed the search for that lost treasure myself. It would be a thrill to find something that huge, and so much is still buried under the sand waiting to recovered even 50 years later! Thanks!
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