BVI Hunter
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I do not say this to rain on your parade, but being a full-time rare book, art and antiques dealer I have consigned to Sotheby's five different items in the last twelve years, and they usually want the item to have an estimated value of at least $10,000. I think you should try to find a more suitable auction house that's deals exclusively or almost exclusively with sunken treasure and artifacts. I think there are a few good ones in Florida. Also, did you send the pictures to the specific department's email that deals with this kind of artifact, or just to Sotheby's general email? The reason I ask, is that it might take a few weeks (at least) to receive a reply (since they get tons of appraisal requests each day) from the general email. If you want to pursue Sotheby's, I would get a hold of the correct department, call and speak to someone in that department, telling them what you have, and then send the pictures to your contact. You'll get an answer much quicker that way.
Good advice - thanks!!
if anyone knows of any auction house etc that may deal with this type of thing (not saying its worth a fortune, but would like to see?) than please let me know?
Maybe I can buy a small boat, then go haul up the rest..........
You might want to contact this company:
Daniel Frank Sedwick Professional Numismatists
Treasure And World Coin Auctions
Winter Park, Florida
Spanish Colonial and Latin American Coinage, Shipwreck Coins and Artifacts of all Nations by Daniel Frank Sedwick, LLC
Many thanks!!!
love your banner finds BTW!
Thanks, but needless to say, not as nice as yours! One more piece of advice, if an auction house attempts to purchase the coins outright, find another auction. Though I doubt Sotheby's or Heritage would try that. I've never dealt with Sedwick, so I don't know.
I found some amazing things in my day's but this really tops them all.... I've never been so pumped about a find before !! I'm a PADI diver so if you ever need a dive buddy to get the rest I'd love to help.... I don't know why your not out there already with a underwater camera. I could not sit still until I searched 5 miles in every direction !! I'm really hoping you find more, I hope you can get out there before someone else stumbles across something. Sorry, but this thread has me real pumped !!
Keep @ it and HH !!
UPDATE;
Sedwicks suggested starting at $500
I'd never sell this find for $500 or even double that. Well....... I would sure hope that I would never need to sell it for that.
I believe you always have the option to put a reserve price on your auction, so if the reserve is not met then no sale and you get your item back.
The key word here being IF. Remember these finds were made in 2 ft. of water which to me signals that these are remnants of something that have washed ashore from somewhere--possibly long ago. It's highly unlikely in my opinion that there is going to be a huge windfall of coins where he is searching or they would have been washing up on the shore and found by many, though hopefully there will be some more coins, relics, and projectiles where he is searching.
In the mean time he is finding some very interesting projectiles that can identified here and it would serve no purpose at all to keep these finds quiet. I would agree with you if these finds eventually point to the existence of a wreck somewhere laden with treasure, but again that is a big IF and will in all likelyhood require a lot of work by many people to recover the goods.
In the mean time, I for one would like to see what other sorts of items he finds in the current search field. I think the most sage advice right now is just to keep the location of the search field to himself for now.
He may have a narrow window of opportunity as there's always the possibility that as the days go on that the area will get sanded in and the items again will be out of reach.
I absolutely agree with Erik's last sentence. With the heart of hurricane season approaching I would not waste any time trying to recover as much as I could from this site. I'm sure you know the Virgin Islands are frequently hit by tropical storms and hurricanes and it would be a shame to have any remaining treasure get scattered and lost forever. But if the coins were found in an extremely sheltered area on the west side of the islands it might survive a storm. Case in point - a couple good friends of mine have been hitting this extremely early riverfront site here in eastern Virginia for years that's given up numerous spanish cobs, hammered coins, early pipe bowls and pottery, etc. These were found on the beach and the low tide area right next to the original chimney that was practically in the water from all the erosion over the years. But all the finds had remained in that immediate vicinity for the last 400 years in spite of many storms. But after a nor'easter last fall they went back to see what the storm might have uncovered and found the whole site had been wiped clean (except for the chimney) and they could not find a single thing, not even a piece of small iron. They even checked a 1/2 mile down the beach in both directions but still nothing. So you just never know when Mother Nature will come in and swoop your treasure away. So it goes without saying that you should expedite your search and do everything you can before your worst fear happens. I wish you all the luck in the world with your recoveries.