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View Full Version : Florida family finds $300,000 worth of sunken treasure



Tyr-Ziu Saxnot
09-03-2013, 06:17 PM
http://news.yahoo.com/florida-family-finds-300-000-worth-sunken-treasure-165215946.html
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Some of the gold that the Schmitt family recently found hunting for treasure over the weekend off the coast of Florida. They hauled up an estimated $300,000 worth of gold from an historic wreckage. (Photo by Booty Salvage via 1715 Fleet - Queens Jewels, LLC)
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Yahoo! Newspaper Consortium/Photo by Booty Salvage via 1715 Fleet - Queens Jewels, LLC - Some of the gold that the Schmitt family recently found hunting for treasure over the weekend off the coast of Florida. …more

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By Barbara Liston

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - A Florida family who spends their time together hunting for treasure struck it rich over the weekend, hauling up an estimated $300,000 worth of gold from an historic wreckage in the Atlantic Ocean.

"What's really neat about them is they are a family, they spend family time together out there and the most amazing part about them is they always believed this day would come," said Brent Brisben, whose company 1715 Fleet - Queens Jewels LLC owns the rights to the wreckage.

Brisben said Rick and Lisa Schmitt, and their grown children Hillary and Eric, found gold chains and coins from the wreckage of a convoy of 11 ships that went down in a hurricane off the coast of Florida in 1715 en route from Havana to Spain.

The ships' manifests indicate that about $400 million worth of treasure was on board, of which $175 million has been recovered, Brisben said.

His company bought the rights to the wreck site from the heirs of legendary treasure hunter Mel Fisher in 2010 and allows others, including the Schmitts, to search under subcontracting agreements.

Brisben said the Schmitts, who live in Sanford, Florida, have been searching for treasure for years. Eric Schmitt, who made the latest haul, also found a silver platter worth about $25,000 in 2002 when he was a high school sophomore.

Under U.S. and Florida law, the treasure will be placed into the custody of the U.S. District Court in South Florida. The state of Florida will be allowed to take possession of up to 20 percent of the find for display in a state museum. The remainder will be split evenly between Brisben's company and the Schmitt family, he said.

Abbey Marie
09-04-2013, 01:35 PM
I wouldn't mind spending family time out on the water, with the potential of finding treasure to boot.

Marcus Aurelius
09-04-2013, 02:09 PM
I found $ .37 and a rusty nail on the beach with a metal detector once.

Abbey Marie
09-04-2013, 02:53 PM
I found $ .37 and a rusty nail on the beach with a metal detector once.

Lol. Hope you didn't pay for the detector. If so, you need to find a lot more stuff.

Marcus Aurelius
09-04-2013, 03:06 PM
Lol. Hope you didn't pay for the detector. If so, you need to find a lot more stuff.

tell me about it... lol

aboutime
09-04-2013, 03:15 PM
I found $ .37 and a rusty nail on the beach with a metal detector once.


Good for you Marcus. It is lot's of fun, thinking you'll find something valuable.

Speaking of which.:cool: I've been looking for that Nail for years. Can you send it to me???:laugh:

Abbey Marie
09-04-2013, 08:04 PM
Good for you Marcus. It is lot's of fun, thinking you'll find something valuable.

Speaking of which.:cool: I've been looking for that Nail for years. Can you send it to me???:laugh:

:laugh2:

indago
08-21-2015, 01:29 PM
Journalist Mike Schneider wrote for The Associated Press 20 August 2015:
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Diver William Bartlett had just started exploring a 300-year-old shipwreck with a metal detector late last month in the waters off Florida's Atlantic Coast when he found his first Spanish gold coin. Then one coin became two and two became so many he had to stuff them into his diving glove.

When he resurfaced, "every fingertip was stacked with gold coins, and we knew then we were into something super special," the captain of his boat, Jonah Martinez, said Thursday.

Over the next two days, Martinez, Bartlett and another treasure hunter, Dan Beckingham, found 350 coins worth $4.5 million, the most valuable find from the 1715 shipwreck site in recent decades.

Eleven treasure-laden ships that made up the 1715 Fleet were heading to Spain from Havana on July 31, 1715, when they encountered a hurricane off Florida's central coast. The winds and waves smashed the ships onto reefs, claiming as many as 1,000 lives in one of colonial Spain's biggest maritime disasters off Florida.
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article (http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SPANISH_TREASURE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-08-20-17-42-15)

indago
12-06-2015, 08:10 AM
From The Associated Press 5 December 2015:
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President Juan Manual Santos on Saturday hailed the discovery of a Spanish galleon that went down off the South American nation's coast more than 300 years ago with what may be the world's largest sunken treasure. ...While no humans have yet to reach the wreckage site, autonomous underwater vehicles had gone there and brought back photos of dolphin-stamped bronze cannons in a well-preserved state that leave no doubt to the ship's identity, the government said. The discovery is the latest chapter in a saga that began three centuries ago, on June 8, 1708, when the galleon ship with 600 people aboard sank as it was trying to outrun a fleet of British warships. It is believed to have been carrying 11 million gold coins and jewels from then Spanish-controlled colonies that could be worth billions of dollars if ever recovered.
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article (http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LT_COLOMBIA_SUNKEN_GALLEON?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-12-05-20-28-23)

DLT
12-06-2015, 10:10 AM
I found $ .37 and a rusty nail on the beach with a metal detector once.

You beat me. All I ever found was a bunch of broken glass!