A treasure hunter... well... hunts treasures. But he needs to find them the earlier the possible, so as not to loose money (his and other's, mainly other's money).
He chased the dream and looked for it, for 20 years, on the wrong place - until he was corrected by Eugene Lyon's archival research.
That, after he spent more money that he ever made from, was heavily fined for having destructed coral reefs and the marine environment and had accidents with fatalities.
I understand you met the guy and admire him. But, my unbiased opinion is, he should have been doing something else, really.
"Melvin A. Fisher’s search for the Atocha was extraordinarilywidely publicized (Daley 1977; Sullivan 1987; Weller1996; Smith 2003; Jones 2011). The Atocha venture isrepeatedly said to have been worth $400 million (Johnson2000:152, 161; Smith 2003:197; Saar 2007:31). As willbe demonstrated below, however, this figure is highlyquestionable.
Unfortunately, the Atocha is a difficult situation to subject to a financial analysis. Its value is difficult to estimatebecause the recovered artifacts were not sold in a singleauction. Instead, Fisher put his company into liquidationand distributed the assets among the employees and investors using a point system (Smith 2003:168).
The expensesof the search for the Atocha are also difficult to calculatebecause of the length of the search (the search lasted fortwo decades) and because Fisher financed his operationsthrough a complex array of financial instruments andcorporate entities (Shaw 1974; Daley 1977:190–191;Trupp 1986:136–138; DiLucia 1989). This makes it difficult to estimate both the economic value of the artifactsrecovered and the expenses of the enterprise. Despitethese problems with the data, the notoriety of the searchfor the Atocha and the widespread acceptance of the claimthat the Atocha was worth $400 million make it importantto examine the claimed value of the recovered artifactsand to estimate whether the enterprise was profitable inthe end. Where there are strong arguments for alternative estimates, a range of estimates will be used in lieu ofa single value.The venture recovered 185,000 silver coins and 120gold coins (Malcom 2000; Kleeberg 2009:29–31).
Themajor auction of artifacts from the Atocha was held byChristie’s in June 1988 (Christie’s 1988). The Christie’sauction, however, did not provide a realistic market priceof the Atocha coins. The median price realized per silvercoin was $528, but of the 331 silver coins offered in thatauction, 246 coins (nearly three quarters of the coins offered) went unsold because the prices did not reach the reserve, which indicates that the reserves were set too high.In other words, $528 was not the actual price at whichAtocha coins could have been sold in 1988 (the marketclearing price), but a best case scenario involving the verybest coins in an auction that itself was a selection of thevery best objects recovered. Many Atocha coins are illegiblelumps of corroded silver in poor condition. Fisher himselfadmitted that fewer than 10% of the coins were marketable(Fins 1988:71). Burt Webber (1986:248) states that basedon his experience with the Concepción, collectors would endup paying a price that averages 3.5 times the melt value ofthe coins. Given their poor condition, Webber’s estimateof 3.5 times the silver value is a reasonable estimate of theaverage price of an Atocha coin.
As can be seen in Table 1, this results in the figure of $2,933,232.98 for the value ofthe Atocha silver coins.Nine hundred and fifty-nine silver bars were recoveredfrom the Atocha (Craig and Richards 2003:155–1961).Daley (1977:235–236) asserts that the IRS values bullion atthree times melt for silver items, and seven times for gold.This, however, appears to be an overvaluation, given thatthere is no substantial collectors’ premium on the silverbars. Frank Sedwick, the leading coin dealer specializing inSpanish American coinage, testified that he did not knowanyone who collected bullion items (Perdue 1991:852).A few dozen bars recovered from a shipwreck will command a premium from collectors as a curiosity, but whenhundreds are recovered the premium will collapse and theprice will approach the melt price of bullion. This is borneout by the fate of bars recovered from both the Atocha (959bars recovered) and the Central America (500 bars recovered), some of which have been melted to be marketed asjewelry and commemorative coins (Tampa Bay 1989:47;Tatge and Gottfried 2006). If there really were a significantcollectors’ premium, melting bars down to make jewelryand commemorative coins would not be an economic practice. It is thus more plausible to value the silver bars at themelt price. To account for the alternative possibility thatwhat Daley claims as the IRS valuation is, indeed, correct,that figure will be used as well and the results reported ina range. As summarized in Table 1, this results in a value forthe silver bars from the Atocha of $5,670,580.17, or, at thealternate valuation of three times melt, $17,011,740.51.Besides the silver bars and silver coins, items recovered from the Atocha included non-coin artifacts. Themore valuable items included three astrolabes and a coralrosary. Besides this, 120 gold coins were recovered fromthe Atocha, plus the artifacts recovered from another galleon that sank in 1622, the Santa Margarita. The items inthese categories sold for $2,194,973 at the Christie’s sale.Other artifacts were retained by Fisher and other investors and not sold in the Christie’s sale, but the Christie’ssale had most of the top quality items, so it is reasonable to assume that the artifacts retained were, at most,equal in value to the artifacts auctioned.
To account forthe retained artifacts, the value of the items from the Christie’s sale will accordingly be doubled to $4,389,946.Adding this number to the figures already derived for thesilver coins and the range for the silver bars results ina total value for the artifacts recovered from the Atochaand Santa Margarita ranging from $12,993,759.15 to$24,334,919.49 which is only 3–6% of the widely citedestimate of $400 million.A proper insight into the cost of the search for theAtocha could be achieved if all financial statements (thebalance sheets and the profit and loss accounts) for allFisher’s corporate entities were to be made available, butthese have never been published. There is, however, onetransaction that can be used as the basis for an estimate ofthe cost of finding the Atocha. Fisher sold the right to 10%of the Atocha and Santa Margarita to the Long Island investor Carl Paffendorf and his Vanguard Ventures for $5.25million (New York Times 1985). If $5.25 million was whatthese business people considered the right price for 10% ofthe Atocha venture, then it is reasonable to assume that thetotal capitalization of the Atocha search was $52.5 million.The statement made by the stockbroker Jerome U. Burke(Trupp 1986:137) that Burke raised money for Fisher at anannual rate of $3–4 million in the mid-1980s strengthensthe plausibility of the $52.5 million figure.
Another investor, Merlin Stickelber, invested $100,000 in exchange for0.5% of the Atocha (Stickelber 1998). This would result inan alternative capitalization for the cost of searching forthe Atocha, namely $20 million. These two figures presenta wide range, $20–52.5 million, but provide a reasonableestimate of the costs for the search and recovery of theAtocha.Considering that the estimate of the value of theartifacts recovered ranges from $12,993,759.15 to$24,334,919.49 and the estimated cost of the searchranges from $20 million to $52.5 million, the net result ofthe entire enterprise ranges from a loss of $39,506,240.85to a profit of $4,334,919.49. Two conclusions can be derived from these calculations.
The first conclusion is that,given that the estimated value of the artifacts recovered inthe Atocha venture ranges from $13 million to $24 million,the much publicized figure of $400 million is highly exaggerated.
The second conclusion is that the Atocha ventureprobably lost money. The $4.3 million profit would onlyapply if the silver bars were sold for high prices (and it appears they were not) and if the cost of the venture was $20million rather than $52.5 million."
Back off of Mel ... you did not know him... I did... and he would have never made a statement about you and the way you did something.
He is and will be the greatest seeker and finder of all time... regardless of how you try to chip away at that it will always be that way.
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