Lot 346

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Description:

Caribbean Shipwreck! Underwater Objects Salvaged by Mel Fisher's Cobb Coin Company--Could They Contain Gold Nuggets or Other Spanish Fleet Treasures?

A fascinating collection of nine items retrieved by underwater treasure hunter Mel Fisher (1922-1998) and crew members of the Cobb Coin Company. The artifacts were likely salvaged from the 1715 Spanish Plate Fleet wreckage site located in the waters off eastern Florida sometime between the 1960s and 1990s. A highlight of the collection is a large sample heavily encrusted with hundreds of layers of minerals, seabed sediments, shell fish, and other organic materials. The plaster-like buildup, known as concretion, occurs when layers form and harden around bits of ceramic, wood, and metal under the right environmental conditions. Might our sample reveal gold nuggets, coins, or other treasures from a Spanish galleon, embedded deep inside?

The lot is comprised of:

1. The largest sample, measuring 9.25" assembled, whose bulbous layers of concretion appear to have formed around a square rod of hollow metal. The uppermost tip measuring 2.25" has broken off but is still included. Attached to the tip is a stamped metal dog tag reading "8SLI7 / I07 I984 / COBB COIN." (Other examples of Cobb Coin Company artifacts feature a similar alphanumeric identification code.)

2. Two potsherds of whitish fired pottery.

3. Six metal or wooden fragments, the smallest measuring .75" x .5."

Mel Fisher, a former chicken farmer, established one of the first scuba diving shops in the United States in the early 1950s. His passion for scuba diving quickly expanded into salvage recovery and exploration. Fisher teamed up with local treasure hunters in the early 1960s to determine the exact site of the 1715 Spanish Plate Fleet shipwreck. This catastrophic shipwreck occurred when eleven vessels heavily laden with riches from the New World sunk in a hurricane off of modern day Vero Beach, Florida in July 1715. Between ca. 1963-1981, Fisher's Cobb Coin Company and its business partners excavated the underwater debris field. There, according to a 1982 court filing, they found "1034 silver coins, twelve Royal Eight escudos, ten to twelve clumps of silver coins, two gold discs, and hundreds of miscellaneous 'encrusted objects'" in the 1981 season alone. Could anything similarly valuable be found in our samples?

Mel Fisher's excavation of the 1715 Spanish Plate Fleet is often overshadowed by his discovery of the so-called "Atocha Motherlode." In the mid-1970s, Fisher and his team discovered the wreck of another Spanish treasure galleon, the "Nuestra Senora de Atocha" which sank alongside its sister ship "Santa Margarita" off the Florida Keys in 1622. The haul from the "Atocha" shipwreck was extensive; it contained approximately 40 tons of gold and silver, Colombian emeralds, bronze cannons, ceramics, and other artifacts estimated at $450 million.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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March 3, 2021 10:30 AM EST
Wilton, CT, US

University Archives

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Bid Increments
From: To: Increments:
$0 $99 $10
$100 $299 $20
$300 $499 $25
$500 $999 $50
$1,000 $1,999 $100
$2,000 $2,999 $200
$3,000 $4,999 $250
$5,000 $9,999 $500
$10,000 $19,999 $1,000
$20,000 $49,999 $2,500
$50,000 + $5,000