Recovered coins go on auction.
A rare gold stater coin struck by Brutus, one of the assassins of Julius Caesar, together with two rare Spanish pieces-of-eight, that were recovered from the world's deepest known wreck site, are among more than 250 coin lots to be auctioned on Friday 18th. The auctioneers are the Time Line London sale, scheduled to be held at the prestigious Swedenborg Hall near the British Museum.
The stater (gold coin above) , only one of a kind known, was issued by Brutus, which depicts him standing with two of his officers when he was Roman consul in Thrace (parts of modern day Greece and Bulgaria) during the middle of the 1st century BC.
The rare silver pieces-of-eight came to light during a search in 1992 for the U.S. space capsul LIBERTY BELL 7, which sank during a sea test when space pilot Gus Grissom almost died. While searching for the sunken space capsul on the sea floor, an unidentified anomoly was noted at 16,300 feet. When an undersea robot was sent to investigate, the robort discovered not the space capsul, but an unidentified wreck of a wooden sailing ship. When a mechanical arm on the robot probed the wreck, it discovered a chest containing over 300 silver coins and a small ornate box containing gold coins that were wrapped in a newspaper dated August 6, 1809.
The story did not identify the nationality of the wreck, or surmise how the ship sank, whether by a violent storm or a rogue wave, a monstrous 70 to 90 foot crest that can appear from nowhere even on a sunny day.
You can bid on some of these coin lots and browse the complete catalog at www.timelineauctions.com
Story by Time Line Auctions, Ltd. and presented by Shipwrecks and Lost Treasures of the Seven Seas.
Courtesy of Crackers Nautical News
Montani semper liberi ! Happy modeling to all and every one of you.
Crackers 