SEDWICKCOINS BLOG

Lot 239, Sedwick Treasure Auction #19

Rarely does one random event lead to so much mayhem as the wreck of the SS Central America when it sank in a hurricane in 1857. It reminds me of something that Eppie Lederer (aka Ann Landers) once said when someone asked her whether she fabricated any of the letters in her advice column: “I can’t make this stuff up.” The story of the aftermath of the wreck of the SS Central America is rife with sorrow, greed, adventure, and downright bizarreness.

There are many great articles and books about the fate of the SS Central America and its re-discovery by Tommy Thompson and his group of investors called the Columbus America Discovery Group over 100 years later, but in a nutshell, the ship was laden with gold from the California gold rush years and uncirculated gold coins from the San Francisco mint when it sailed into a hurricane off the coast of Carolinas on September 9, 1857. The ship sank, taking with it an estimated $50,000,000 in today’s money and no hope of recovery. Many people drown although some were rescued. This significant monetary loss became a factor in the so-called Panic of 1857 that shook public confidence in the economy. Fast forward to September of 1988, when an engineer from the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, named Tommy Thompson had an idea where the SS Central America could be located and subsequently found the wreck thanks to technology not previously available. He and his crew were able to bring up an estimated $100-150 million of recovered gold. After that, the story takes a twist for the crazy when Thompson failed to pay investors and fled to an abandoned mansion in Vero Beach, Florida with his girlfriend, Alison Antekeier. They were finally caught holed up in a Hilton hotel in Boca Raton, Florida in January of 2015 and are now in prison. What was in the hotel room? Lots of strange, that’s what:

• 43 cellphones and 12 computers
• A trash bag full of prescription medication
• Registration papers for a trust in Belize
• Money wrappers in $10,000 amounts
• An expired US Treasury check for $216,939
• And an award-winning idea for hiding money, lunch boxes containing cash

So, if you want to own an extremely interesting piece of history, now is your opportunity! We have 3 coins from the wreck in our upcoming Treasure Auction #19, and one of them can be yours. We can’t often offer you both a beautiful coin and a really interesting story to go with it.

Lot 240, Sedwick Treasure Auction #19

Lot 243, Sedwick Treasure Auction #19

If you love U.S. coins and enjoy a good story, check out lots 267-282 in our upcoming auction. They are all quarter dollars, NGC encapsulated with “New Orleans Bank Find” stated inside the slab. Auction estimates range from $500-750 to $4,000-$6,000. All the coins are dated 1840 or 1841, and all but one have an O mintmark for the New Orleans mint.

The innocuous label “New Orleans Bank Find” belies the interesting story behind these coins. We don’t know where the coins originally came from, although we believe they were from an old bank in New Orleans that sat vacant for many years before being torn down to make way for a hotel. We don’t know how many coins were found because of the way in which they came to light. What we do know is that greed and the promise of easy money are always near and dear to the human heart.

On October 28, 1982, a backhoe operator clearing a lot in downtown New Orleans on Canal Street to make way for the new Meridien Hotel uncovered two boxes measuring 10” x 12” x 8”. The boxes broke open at the site, spilling out their contents of silver coins, and passersby eagerly jumped into the mud and muck to grab whatever they could. A construction worker at the site commented that people were “down in the ground in coats and suits and ties like hogs.” The onsite superintendent corroborated what happened in less colorful words: “It [the boxes] broke open and 200 hands got in it.” Before long, what was estimated to be a trove of 1,000 French, Spanish, Mexican and U.S. coins vanished, with the backhoe operator reportedly taking the lion’s share. It was Mardi Gras in October!

No one wanted to report what he or she had found for fear of government confiscation of their colorful prospecting, but lawyers determined that the state could not lay claim to treasure found on private land. The owners of the then-incomplete hotel quickly posted guards at the site and the construction company accelerated its schedule by pouring concrete into the treasure hole. Now we’ll never know whether there were more boxes of coins yet to be found.

Mr. James H. Cohen, a coin and antiquities dealer who owns James H. Cohen & Sons, Inc. on Royal Street in New Orleans, saw many of the coins when people who got down and dirty to grab them wanted some idea of value or even to sell them. Mr. Cohen said the earliest piece he saw was a high-grade pillar 2 reales from Mexico City dated 1754 and the latest coin was a U.S. 1843 quarter dollar in AU condition, indicating that the hoard was probably buried shortly after that date. The rest of the coins ran the gamut from low grade to virtually uncirculated. Most of the Mexican 2 reales were well circulated and the foreign coins far exceeded the U.S. in quantity.

Finding a hoard like this is like taking a photo for posterity of what was being circulated at that time. Clearly Spanish colonial and Mexican coins were circulated along with U.S. coins. This went on until 1857 when banks were no longer required to exchange foreign coins for U.S. coins.

Lot 267, Treasure Auction #19

The coins we have for auction are all U.S. quarter dollars minted in 1840 and 1841. According to Paul M. Green, a writer for Numismatic News, “the 1841-O as well as the 1840-O were relatively tough New Orleans Seated Liberty quarters. Each mintage was between 400,000 and 500,000 with the 1841-O at 452,000. It’s not by definition an easy date, and it has a premium price of $750 in MS-60 and $10,000 in MS-65.”

So, we hope you will appreciate the story behind these coins and want to have one for your very own. At least you won’t have to jump into a muddy pit to take possession!

Lot 1748, Sedwick Auction #19

We have a fascinating document in our Treasure, World and U.S. Auction #19 that is unfortunately a counterfeit, but its underlying theory is genuine. Take a look at Lot 1743, a document purporting to be a statement made in 1553 by a pirate Eli Fleete giving details of where he buried his treasure in Barbados or thereabouts so he or his relatives (in case he wasn’t around anymore) would know where to find it again. The statement is coded, and the cipher to read the coding accompanies it. How convenient! None of it is true, so don’t bother to go looking for his treasure. What’s true is that ciphers were in use in colonial times.

Lot 1743, Sedwick Auction #19

Monarchs used ciphers to correspond with ambassadors and viceroys who were their ears and eyes in foreign courts. We have a letter and its accompanying cipher written by Hernan Cortes in early colonial times. We even have evidence of Philip II, the son of Charles I of Spain (also Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire) corresponding with ciphers. If you’re interested, you can read more at http://cryptiana.web.fc2.com. And so, while Lot 1743 is not a genuine letter and cipher, it represents a very well used convention in early colonial times. Nowadays, we call this “encryption,” so maybe there’s nothing new under the sun.

Hernan Cortes Letter

Auction bidding for our Treasure, World and U.S. Coin Auction #19 is underway, so please sign up to bid! The auction will go live on the Internet on May 18 and 19. Please consult the catalog for Session times. Remember that the advantage of bidding ahead of time is that if there is a tie bid, the winner is the bidder who bid first.

Like our artwork for the cover? It’s lot 1748, the final lot in the auction and can be yours if you’re the winning bidder! You can read about the artist in the lot description.

Payday by Liliya Skubish, cover for our upcoming Sedwick Treasure Auction #19

We’re busy getting ready for our next auction, which is quite a production! First we collect consignments, then we assign lot numbers to each auction lot, and then we photograph everything. While that’s going on, Dan writes a detailed description about each lot. After layout is complete, catalogs are ordered and voila, the fun really begins.

Book by Dave Horner, 1999

Speaking of consignments, we are very proud and pleased that two important collectors, Tom Gray and Dave Horner, are allowing us to auction all or some parts of their collections for them. The coins from Dave Horner’s collection (Dave is a well-known treasure hunter and writer) include 1715 Fleet gold cobs and shipwreck coins from the San Martin, the Capitana, the Maravillas, and the Jupiter Wreck.

Tom Gray’s collection, which was previously exhibited as “Treasures of the Deep: Galleons, Storms and Archeology,” last year at the American

Tom Gray with his mother, Anne Gray

Numismatic Association’s museum in Colorado Springs, concentrates on shipwreck coins and ingots. As a result, our shipwreck coin section features some shipwrecks that you don’t normally see (and many that you do). There are over 50 shipwrecks represented, from ancient Egyptian galley wrecks to the SS Crescent City which sank off Cork, Ireland in 1871. In between there are 16 lots from the previously mentioned San Martin, which at the time of its salvage, was the earliest documented shipwreck ever salvaged off the east coast of Florida. We have coins from famous shipwrecks like the Vergulde Draeck (which sank in 1656 off Western Australia and whose coins must be accompanied by the original Western Australian Museum certificate) and the Whydah (a true pirate ship which sank in 1717 off Cape Cod and whose coins are almost all housed at the Whydah Pirate Museum in Provincetown, MA). Also extremely rare are coins we will auction from such wrecks as the Aguila Volante, which sank in 1701 off Punta Santa Elena, Ecuador;the Wendela, which sank in 1737 off the Shetland Islands, north of Scotland; the Colossus, which sank in 1798 off the Scilly Isles, southwest of England; and the aforementioned S.S. Crescent City.

So, if you’re a collector of shipwreck coins, this is the auction for you!

Next time, I’ll highlight more tidbits from our auction and we’ll be that much closer to catalog publication and online viewing. Back to work now!

Hot off the press: From the blog at the American Numismatic Society, the Newman Numismatic Portal is now open! This portal, dubbed the NNP, “aims to provide the most comprehensive numismatic resources available on the Internet.”It is funded by Eric P. Newman Numismatic Education Society (EPNNES). As the blog states, “Over 3,000 documents, representing more than 100,000 pages, have been completed to date. The documents represent a mix of auction catalogs, periodicals, reference books, and archival material. Most of this material is unique to the Newman Portal and has not been previously scanned.” It’s well worth your time to wander over to the website and check it out. All of us are indebted to people who have the time and money to enrich our lives and our livelihoods in this way. Pay it forward when you can.