7/28/2015 Report - New Photos Of The Amazing Royal Found By Schmitt Family On Treasure Coast Wreck Site. Also Other Coins And Bottom Where Found.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachsreport.blogspot.com.

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.

Gold Coins Recently Found by the Schmitt Family On A Treasure Coast Shipwreck.

The above photos were sent to me by Captain Jonah Martinez.  Thanks much Jonah!  And congratulations to the Schmitt family.  Unbelievable!

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.

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

4/13/15 Report - 1711 LIma 8 Escudo From 1715 Fleet. Lots of Sand on Treasure Coast.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

1711 Lima 8 Escudos In The Current Sedwick Coins Auction.

This 8 escudo is from the 1715 Fleet, and is encapsulated NGC MS 64, which is the highest grade certified for any Lima eight.   It is lot 28 in the auction.

You can see why it grades so well.  Very bold strike.  Look at the detail in the castle, for example.
A very bold strike and good luster.

You can see the three digits of the year 1711.  Also the mint mark in the upper left, assayer initial upper right, and denomination upper middle.

It comes with a Fisher photo-certificate.

It has an auction estimate of 20 to 40 thousand dollars, and already has a bid of $23,000.  I expect it to go much higher.

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One Treasure Coast Beach This Morning Near Low Tide.
 

There were a couple of spots where the front beach was a little steeper where there were some modest coin clusters.  This beach was steeper than I expected.

The dry sand here showed evidence of heavy weekend use.  There was a bunch of junk strewn around and the sand looked like a football game had been played there.

I visited another beach this morning, one that is one of my favorites and found it to be worse than this beach.  It had accumulated about two feet of sand since the last time I was there.  As a result I was digging a lot of DEEP holes in very fine compact sand that was not easy to dig.  Thank goodness one of those deep holes paid off.  I must be getting lazy in my old age.

The Treasure Coast beaches are as clean as I've ever seen (target wise). People have evidently been removing the pull tabs, bottle caps, etc.  I wonder if I had anything to do with that?

When the junk targets are removed from beaches there is less and less benefit in using discrimination.

I mentioned just the other day how I had cleaned up one beach for myself and now even with zero discrimination, there is little junk to be detected.

Surf At One Treasure Coast Beach Near Low Tide This Morning.

One thing about the Excalibur is that it isn't too hot to iron.  That isn't what I was using today.  I was using a PI detector and there still was very little iron.

I've been really learning to make the optimal use of a detector that is fairly new to me.  I've spent a lot of time experimenting with it and the various settings and techniques.

I want to be able to use it to best advantage when a storm finally comes along that uncovers some older items on the beach.

I much prefer hunting a beach with features, including dips, cuts, holes, etc.  It is more interesting to me to hunt for accumulations even when it is easier to go for the recent drops.

Some spots accumulate coins and things consistently over a period of years or even decades.  Others seem to come and go more quickly.

I'll talk about that more some other time and maybe a few detectors as they shape up as beach machines.

I'll have to make some find photos later today.

Nothing more than a three-foot surf in the predictions for the Treasure Coast for the next week or so. We have to get a storm sometime.

That's all for now.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@Comcast.net