Shipwreck yields haul of coins — and doubts

Deep-sea treasure hunters said Friday they recovered what could be a record haul of gold and silver coins from a Colonial-era shipwreck, but their failure to provide many details has set off a galleon-size controversy.

The hunters from Odyssey Marine Exploration, a Tampa, Fla., company, said their haul has so far totaled about 17 tons of coins, pieces of jewelry and other objects.

Each coin — more than 500,000 were pulled from the wreckage — could bring between a few hundred and several thousand dollars, according to an expert who evaluated some at the company's request. The total could reach $500 million, which would make it one of the most valuable sunken treasures discovered.

But some experts in nautical archaeology cast doubt on the value of the booty.

"There is no such thing as $500 million on any wreck in the world," said veteran treasure hunter Robert Marx. "Anybody who says so is ... lying."

George Bass, an archaeologist at Texas A&M University who specializes in shipwrecks, said he is skeptical of early estimates, especially when the company has provided such little information.

"Very often, it's exaggerated because of course they need to get financial backers," he said.

Odyssey Marine Exploration is unusual in the treasure-hunting world: Its stock is publicly traded on the American Stock Exchange.

Odyssey co-founder Greg Stemm said the company is being "relatively secretive" while it confirms the identity of the ship.

The company said it planned to return to the shipwreck for further exploration and excavation, and more coins might be found. The 500,000 coins salvaged are in the U.S., in a secure and secret location, the company said.

A company spokeswoman said that because the firm is publicly traded, it cannot distort the value of its discovery.

Since September, the company has filed a series of motions in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida for a summary judgment giving it the exclusive rights to an "unidentified, shipwrecked vessel." A judge granted those rights Wednesday.

The documents say the wreck was found last summer 40 miles off the southwestern tip of England. It was a 17th-century merchant vessel equipped with cannons. Stemm would neither confirm nor deny that the filings refer to the new discovery.

The firm announced the find with scant details, explaining the wreck was found in international waters in the Atlantic. Officials code-named the site "Black Swan."

Rare-coin expert Nick Bruyer recently inspected some coins and declared the size of the find "unprecedented." The coins spanned several decades and were exceptionally well-preserved, he said.

After examining dozens of them, he concluded their value ranged from a few hundred dollars to $4,000 apiece. The finest specimens "could bring record-breaking prices," said Bruyer, founder of Asset Marketing Services, in Burnsville, Minn., who has done work for Odyssey in the past.

Odyssey has begun marketing the coins on a Web site, www.blackswanshipwreck.com.

Odyssey Marine Exploration was founded in 1994 by Stemm and John Morris. The company went public in 1997.

In 2003, the company began to recover coins and other artifacts from the steamship SS Republic that sank off the coast of Georgia in 1865. Odyssey has sold one-third of the coins so far for a total of $33 million, Stemm said.

Treasure hunting is by nature a secretive world, consisting of a handful of companies. Even by those standards, Odyssey is withholding more information than usual, critics said. "So much is kept secret, it is hard to know what they have," Bass said.

Marx said Odyssey could have disclosed a rough location and date of the wreck, and the nationality of the coins, to satisfy skeptics without jeopardizing the find.

He also said competing legal claims for the treasure could emerge. International laws governing shipwrecks are complex and in many cases give rights to the countries that originally owned the vessels.

Stemm said the company was within its right to scoop up those tons of coins before all the legal questions are settled. He compared the situation to finding a wallet filled with cash but lacking identification to trace its owner.

"We were walking along and we found a wallet with 17 tons of silver," he said.

Additional information from The Associated Press