17 Tons of Treasure Pulled From Shipwreck

A ship that sank hundreds of years ago in busy waters of the Atlantic has delivered an unprecedented underwater bounty to American treasure hunters: 17 tons of silver coins and hundreds of gold coins, jewelry and objects.

The value, estimated by a rare-coin dealer working with the firm, may be as much as $500 million.

The enormous find was revealed yesterday by Odyssey Marine Explorations of Tampa, a publicly traded company that finds, explores and salvages shipwrecks in international waters. The company has made several major discoveries before, but they pale in comparison with the haul from what its officials code-named "Black Swan."

In a release yesterday, the company said that it "believed that this recovery constitutes the largest collection of coins ever excavated from a historical shipwreck site."

The company was reluctant to give out details of its find.

"Our research suggests that there were a number of Colonial-period shipwrecks that were lost in the area where this site is located, so we are being very cautious about speculating as to the possible identity of the shipwreck," said John Morris, Odyssey's co-founder and CEO.

The company also declined to say what country it might have been from, where the coins might have been minted, or when.

Greg Stemm, Odyssey's co-founder, did say, however, that "the remarkable condition of most of the first 6,000 silver coins conserved has been a pleasant surprise, and the gold coins are almost all dazzling mint-state specimens."

Odyssey showed some of the treasure to rare-coin expert Nicholas J. Bruyer of GovMint.com, who has worked with the company before. He said in an e-mail yesterday that "I've handled coins from many shipwrecks over the last 30 years, and I know of no other shipwreck find comparable to this."

He said he had examined about 100 of the coins and also found them to be in remarkably good condition, adding that some still had their original "luster."

"I would say that some were virtually mint condition, but all were high-quality coins," he said.

He estimated that the roughly 500,000 coins could be worth on average $1,000 each, leading to the estimate of $500 million for the entire haul.