Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachsreport.blogspot.com.
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| Royal Found By Schmitt Family On A Treasure Coast Wreck Site. |
Yesterday I posted pictures of the million dollar treasure found by the Schmitt family on one of the Treasure Coast shipwreck sites. Those are pictures that appeared in the mainstream media. Today I have some other pictures of the amazing Royal and other gold coins that you might not have seen elsewhere.
Here are some good close-ups of the Royal.
The Royal is really unbelievable. It shows an amazing strike and is in almost like new condition despite three hundred years on the bottom of the ocean. Aside from a little surface silt, it just has a few scratches that I can see. As you can tell, it is a 1715 OMJ, obviously from the Mexico mint and must have been shipped shortly after it was minted.
This Royal is very much like the 1715 Mexico 8 shown as a type 25 in the book Monedas Espanolas Desde Juana y Carlos A Isabel II 1504 A 1868.
It is often said that Royals were presentation pieces produced for the king. I've seen that disputed by at least one very authoritative source.
Who cares who they were made for, they are beautiful coins in any case.
All of the news outlets have picked up the story and it is everywhere.
Below is another photo that you might not have seen in the media. It shows the gold coins found by the Schmitt family, including other 8 escudos and various denominations.
The Royal is clearly the star of the bunch, but there are some other super nice gold cobs there.
Notice that there are some pillars and waves style escudos in that group.
A little of the dark clay or silt is adhering to some of them, but they are in great condition.
Notice the Pillar and Waves on many of those escudos. Not all Mexico mint there.
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| Gold Coins Recently Found by the Schmitt Family On A Treasure Coast Shipwreck. |
Below is a clip from a video posted on the Orlando Sentinel web site (link below) showing the discovery of the Royal and other escudos. The arrow points to the position of the Royal.
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| Clip from the video shown on numerous sites including the Orlandosentinel.com site linked below. |
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-florida-family-finds-rare-gold-coin-20150727-story.html
I added the arrow to point out the position of the Royal before it was uncovered. You can see other gold coins laying around there.
It is in a dip between rocks. Notice the big rock sticking up in the left corner of the video clip. It is a lot larger than what you can see.
The Royal is in a small depression in what appears to be a clay or similar cohesive silt-like material. It is standing on end. Other escudos are laying flat around there.
That hole would have been well protected. If the cobs were found where I think they were, they were a few hundred yards out from shore where the bottom would seldom be affected by rough water. The assumption of a relatively undisturbed bottom is supported by the presence of clay-like material. You might remember that I once showed how the sand changes as you go from the beach and out to deeper water. That coin would have been safe from most currents, and that certainly looks to be the case. Very little sign of wear or anything, other than the few scratches. I would not be surprised if those coins were in virtually the same location since they were lost 300 years ago.
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I'll stop there today. I was going to post some information relative to what many refer to the "classification" (sifting and sorting) of treasure by the waves and currents. I'll get back to that some other day.
This would be a good time to mention an excellent web site on Pillar coinage. In my opinion it is one o of the best, if not the absolute best.
Take a look.
http://www.columnarios.com/pillars/design.html
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We'll have a very smooth surf on the Treasure Coast tomorrow (Wed.). Some day we'll get some rough surf again, but I don't see anything in the next week or so.
Thanks for your responses to the blog poll.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
