<<Do you suppose they may be in need of some gold?
Britain and U.S. Launch Deep-Sea Treasure Hunt >>
Maybe, but IMO, any gold aboard that ship will never be resmelted into anything else. Halmarked Dore ingots from the SS Central America recovery sold for $473-$520 / oz - and a Kitco quote for same week shows only $291.30 / oz. Sure, it makes good copy for the gold shorts that keep the lie going "all the gold ever mined is available to be remelted for resale", but these are museum items.As I've often posted exterior roof of the Capitol Dome in downtown Denver is covered in Gold Leaf - from the days of the Colorado Gold Rush - and despite the current budget problems - there are NO plans to remove & recycle the 24K gold! Maybe someday all gold will be recycled into something else, but that day is not soon coming! Think of the famous books alone that have gold leaf along the edges - but then man has burned books....
I wish just once one of those asses on CNBC would admit the gold coins from this sort of recovery have no chance of being reminted into any other form - at least until gold price passes between $3000 and $30000 per oz! Did you catch the price of the gold plated tableware from the Titanic? I think the price of the table forks was $2500 each!
educational repost - emphasis added - rh
Battle over shipwreck's gold treasure finally ends
BY MARC DAVIS, The Virginian-Pilot
Feb. 28, 2000
Copyright 2000, Landmark Communications Inc.
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``The story is told
Of the power of gold
And its lure on the unsuspecting
It glitters and shines,
It badgers and blinds,
And constantly needs protecting. . . ''
-- Dan Fogelberg
NORFOLK -- They beckon from pages 164 and 165 of the Sotheby's catalog, two of the biggest gold bricks you've ever laid eyes on.
Go ahead, ogle them. Gaze at the sparkling, yellow finish. Gasp at the very large price tag. Treasure ain't cheap: Each brick sells for a quarter-million dollars.
No ordinary gold bricks, these. One weighs 44 pounds; the other, 40 pounds. Both were pulled from the richest shipwreck ever, the California Gold Rush steamship Central America. And they aren't even the biggest bricks from the wreck.
For 11 years, these bricks, plus three tons of other gold bricks and coins from the Central America, lay in vaults in Norfolk and Chesapeake while lawyers fought over who would keep them.
It was the longest-running case in Norfolk's federal court. It outlived one federal judge and two appeals court judges who handled it.
Now it's over. Probably.
And now, for the first time, a piece of the treasure trove that prompted this very expensive litigation can be yours -- provided you have a fat wallet.
This month, an appeals court entered what may be the last order in this long case. The judges left intact a previous split of the gold, worth about $100 million, giving 92 percent to the treasure hunters who found it and 8 percent to the insurance companies that paid claims on the original 1857 shipwreck.
Since then, about 5,000 gold coins from the shipwreck -- most of them brilliant, uncirculated 1857 pieces worth about $3,000 to $30,000 each -- have gone on sale at three designated dealers across the country. The gold bars will be sold soon.
The response has been tremendous.
``We have never seen anything close to this,'' said Michael Wiggins, marketing director for Blanchard and Co. of New Orleans. ``It's been phenomenal. It's probably the greatest story ever to come through numismatics.''
``There's been nothing comparable,'' said Van Simmons, chief executive officer of David Hall's North American Trading of Santa Ana, Calif. ``There's a wide variety of collectors who are buying these coins. It's not just coin collectors. I've seen historians, economists, authors. It's the widest spectrum of a coin collectible I've ever seen.''
And yet the litigation may not be truly over.
Hidden among 12 pages of jargon from the appeals court is a veiled invitation to the lawyers. The judges seem to be saying: If you appeal just one more time, we may revisit the core issue of who keeps the gold.
The treasure hunters, led by adventurer-scientist Tommy Thompson of Columbus, Ohio, have always fought in court to get all the gold. If they appeal, and if the appeals court overturns its previous decision, Thompson's group could get its wish.
Or, a new appeal by Thompson could bring disaster if the judges think Thompson sold the gold before he had authority from the court.
Dwight Manley, a well-known California sports agent who has represented basketball star Dennis Rodman, among others, bought the entire batch of gold from Thompson's group in December.
Coin World, a trade magazine, reported that it may be the single largest transaction in numismatic history.
Manley won't say how much he paid, but he believes the coins and bars will sell for more than $100 million at retail.
That's a far cry from the $1 billion that some people thought the gold was worth when it was discovered in 1988. But it is still a tall amount for a very tall treasure.
``It's not a collection and it's not a horde,'' Manley said last week. ``It's a time capsule of treasure. It is the largest, greatest numismatic event ever. Not in my lifetime or your lifetime, but ever. There will never be anything as grand or as important.''
SHIP OF GOLD
It was the Titanic of its day.
Until Sept. 12, 1857, the world had never heard of the U.S. Mail Steamship Central America. It was just an anonymous sidewheeler bringing California Gold Rush miners from Panama to New York to sell their gold.
That day in 1857, the ship was packed with 578 passengers, 38,000 pieces of mail and tons of gold.
Off the South Carolina coast, the Central America hit a hurricane. The crew and passengers spent two days bailing with buckets, to no avail. The ship sank, taking 425 passengers. The rest were rescued.
The wreck remained on the ocean floor for 130 years.
Then, in 1988, a team of treasure hunters led by Thompson used sophisticated underwater radar devices to find the Central America, lying 1 1/2 miles under the ocean's surface. In time, Thompson also brought up the ship's gold.
Thompson and his friends sailed triumphantly into Norfolk, bearing the treasure. They gleefully displayed the gold bars and coins on a dock behind Waterside.
A heated legal fight ensued between Thompson and the insurance companies. Eventually, Judge Richard B. Kellam of Norfolk federal court split the treasure, 92 percent to 8 percent. The bars and coins were divvied up in a Chesapeake armored warehouse in 1998.
That same year, a best-selling book about Thompson and the Central America disaster, ``Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea,'' was published.
Finally, an appeals court laid the case to rest on Feb. 8. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the split and ruled that Thompson does not have to publicly release the list of all the gold bars, coins and nuggets his group has.
That was a victory for Thompson, who has been obsessive about keeping secret his share of the gold.
Thompson's relentless secrecy has irked coin collectors, who have long awaited the sale of Central America's gold. ``What is Tommy Thompson hiding?'' Coin World editorialized in December.
The insurance companies have not been so secretive.
Last year, Sotheby's, the New York auction house, published a gorgeous 200-page color catalog of the insurance companies' share of the gold, in anticipation of a public auction last December.
The catalog includes photos and detailed descriptions of 250 gold coins, bars and nuggets, including six enormous bars worth more than $200,000 each. The most expensive, a 44.7-pound behemoth, is valued at $250,000 to $350,000.
But the sale never happened. The appeals court stopped it one day before the auction was to begin.
The court also issued orders in January blocking Thompson from selling his share of the gold -- apparently unaware that he already had.
Too late, said Thompson's attorney. ``The injunction can't be made retroactive,'' lawyer Richard T. Robol told Coin World.
Don't be too sure, said the insurance companies' attorney. ``It might be they (Thompson's group) placed themselves in an awkward position by selling the gold,'' said Norfolk lawyer Guilford D. Ware. ``The court might require them to make restitution.''
GOLD FOR SALE
Meanwhile, Dwight Manley can't help smiling.
In California, Manley holds one of the biggest shipwreck treasures ever. He bought it from Thompson fair and square, he says, and it is the fulfillment of a fantasy.
Manley is rabid about coins. ``That's my passion,'' he said last week. And the Central America treasure is the stuff of legends.
``I don't know of any other that real, that you could buy,'' Manley says.
Most valuable coins are known commodities. Everyone knows they exist and they are locked up in safes or vaults. The Central America treasure, however, is something that came, almost literally, from out of nowhere.
The coins, plucked from the ocean floor after 130 years, ``are in the original condition, just as if they were made yesterday,'' Manley says. ``It's very exciting, very unique.''
It is also profitable. ``Our hope is, obviously, to make a profit in the end,'' Manley says, ``but also to do the right thing. We're very concerned with the historical importance of the treasure and upholding that.''
A touring exhibit of the treasure is now in Long Beach, Calif., with upcoming dates in Philadelphia, New York, Las Vegas and San Francisco. ``Ultimately, it could hit every state,'' Manley says. ``Ideally, it would stay in San Francisco,'' where the Gold Rush began.
For now, Manley is selling the 1857 coins. Demand is so great that all 5,000 coins could be sold in just three months. Dealers originally expected that it would take a year.
``The demand has been incredible, absolutely incredible,'' said Wiggins, marketing director for the New Orleans coin dealer. ``In the first 10 days, we sold $10 million worth.''
In California, David Hall's dealership sold 400 to 600 coins in the first two or three weeks. The coins average about $15,000 apiece, and some go for as much as $30,000, Simmons said. ``Demand is simply huge,'' he said.
Manley will sell the gold bars sometime next year. The insurance companies will auction their coins and bars soon, though no date has been set at Sotheby's.
And Thompson? He plans more expeditions. He thinks there is more gold on the Central America.
``We went to the deep ocean to learn about our past and our future,'' Thompson wrote in ``America's Lost Treasure,'' his own 1998 book. ``That discovery will continue.''
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