IT MAY seem a glamorous life, but the lot of a treasure-hunter is not all adventure, excitement and the dazzle of gold and jewels. Take Odyssey Marine Exploration. One of its vessels was forced into port and searched by Spanish police last week, before being released this week.

Odyssey’s business is based on the notion that the ocean floor is littered with valuable old stuff that, thanks to new deep-sea technology, can now be recovered. Some evidence came in May, when it found 500,000 colonial-era silver coins and a few gold ones at a secret site that it calls Black Swan.

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The 2007 Orders and Medals Society of America International Convention will take place in the Houston area Aug. 9-12 at The Woodlands Waterway Marriott Hotel & Convention Center. It is located 30 minutes north of downtown Houston.

Dealers and collectors from all over the world will gather to buy, sell and exhibit rare and unusual orders, decorations and medals from the United States and other nations from different time periods.

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SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Gold futures climbed more than $4 an ounce Thursday and copper prices rallied nearly 3%, sending the benchmark contracts for both metals to their highest closing levels in more than two months.

Concerns over high energy prices and overall weakness in the U.S. dollar continued to support gold prices, while strong demand for copper and expectations for growth in consumption lifted copper.

Gold for August delivery closed $4.40 higher at $678.10 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the contract’s strongest closing level since May 15. It traded as high as $678.50, its highest intraday level since June 5.

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Editor’s note: It is the opinion of the authors that revisionist theory about Gobrecht dollars is invalid. The Breen theory, that originals can be determined by noting that the eagle flies upward when the coin is properly rotated, they believe should be immediately restored. This article is an attempt to support the contention. It is divided into two parts, with a conclusion following. The first section, by R.W. Julian, deals with the historical aspects of the Gobrecht dollar coinage, while the second, by Craig Sholley, examines the critical areas of mint machinery, weights, die rotation and rarity.

Prior to about 1975 the Gobrecht silver dollars of 1836 through 1839 were all considered to be patterns. It was known that restrikes had been made in the late 1850s but until Walter Breen tackled the problem in the mid-1970s, no one knew how to distinguish the true originals. At the same time, documentary proof was published showing that some of the dollars of 1836 and 1839 were in fact coins issued for circulation.

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