MADRID, Spain: Spain laid formal claim Thursday to a shipwreck that yielded US$500 million (€324 million) in treasure, saying it has proof the vessel is Spanish and demanding that a U.S. deep-sea exploration firm that recovered the booty give it all back.

Culture Ministry officials said the 19th-century shipwreck at the heart of a year-old dispute with Odyssey Marine Exploration is the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes — a Spanish warship sunk by the British navy southwest of Portugal in 1804 with more than 200 people on board.

The Spanish government filed evidence Thursday backing up its claim with a U.S. federal judge hearing the case in Tampa, Florida, where Odyssey is based.
Washington-based lawyer James Goold, who represents the Spanish government in the case, said U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Pizzo would now convene the two parties to review the case before deciding who gets to keep the treasure.

“It is the property of the Spanish navy, government and people, and we want it all back,” said Admiral Teodoro de Leste Contreras, who runs a naval museum owned by the ministry.

Goold said at a news conference in Madrid that he expected Odyssey would keep “not a penny” of the salvage.

Spain argues the entire treasure should be returned because naval vessels never cease to be the property of the nation that flagged them, regardless of where they lay, under the principle of sovereign immunity, Goold said.

“Spain has not abandoned or otherwise relinquished in any way its ownership of Mercedes,” Spain argued in Thursday’s court filing.

Odyssey said it would issue a statement after reviewing Spain’s claim and the file provided Thursday to the U.S. court. But company officials has said in the past they believed the court would award them most of the treasure, as they had found it. (more…)

The House passed legislation Thursday to change the composition of pennies and nickels, addressing dramatic rises in metal prices that have made the coins more expensive to produce than their face value.

Action now moves to the Senate, where the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee has a similar bill, though no action has yet been scheduled.

According to the U.S. Mint, it costs 1.26 cents to make a penny and 7.7 cents to make a nickel. The House bill, sponsored by Zack Space , D-Ohio, estimates that reducing the cost of penny production to face value would save approximately $500 million over 10 years, while similar changes to nickel production would save $60 million annually.

“Right now our government is needlessly throwing away money in the production of coins,” Space, a member of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition, said during floor debate on the bill May 6.

The measure would allow for the minting of pennies made primarily of steel but coated with a copper-colored dye so they appear similar to the current zinc-copper alloy. It also would require the production of 5-cent coins made primarily of steel, with a coating of nickel, in place of the nickel-copper composition originally authorized in 1866 when the coins were first minted.

The last time the penny and the nickel were produced at face value was fiscal year 2005, according to the Mint. (more…)

PRECLUDES MILLER FROM SEEKING STATUTORY DAMAGES OF $10.5 MILLION

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. — Collectors Universe, Inc. reported that on April 23, 2008, the California Supreme Court denied William Miller’s petition for review of the Appellate Court’s decision, issued in February 2008, that Miller is not entitled to statutory damages of $10.5 million against Collectors Universe.

As previously reported, Miller had argued that he was entitled, under California law, to statutorily prescribed damages of $750 for each alleged use of his name by Collectors Universe without his consent and that, since a jury at the trial of the case found that Miller’s name appeared on 14,060 authentication certificates issued by Collectors Universe, he was entitled to statutory damages of $750.00 times 14,060, or approximately $10.5 million in total. The Appellate Court ruled, instead, that the use of his name constituted, at most, a single violation of the statute in question and, therefore, Miller was entitled to no more than $750.00 in statutory damages. Miller then filed a petition with the California Supreme Court seeking a review by that Court of the Appellate Court’s decision.

As a result of the Supreme Court’s action to deny a review of the Appellate Court’s decision, if Miller decides to pursue his claims once again, his only option would be to file, on or before July 7, 2008 for a new trial to reinstate his statutory and common law claims as well as his claim for punitive damages. In any such new trial he would first have to prove that Collectors Universe violated his statutory or common law rights and, even if he succeeded in doing so, he would have to show how, if at all, he was damaged. He would not, however, be entitled to multiply $750.00 by the number of times, if any, that Collectors Universe used his name without his consent, as his measure of damages. The Company cannot predict whether Miller will seek a new trial.

Living in a Radically Transparent world is, it seems, not without risk. Apparently a Seattle man was recently sued for $10,000 because he left a “Neutral” rating for an eBay seller from North Carolina.

Sued! For $10k for using a system that eBay implemented to encourage feedback!!!

Shellhorn bought some Morgan silver dollars from a man in North Carolina. The price was fair, but Shellhorn says the coins were packed poorly. “The coins were hanging out of the envelope, loose, with no packing whatsoever around them,” he said.

The seller wanted feedback. Shellhorn couldn’t honestly say the deal was good or bad so he took the middle ground. “This is neutral feedback, not even negative feedback, but neutral. He sued me for $10,000,” he said.

The judge in Buncome County, NC did dismiss the law suit, but it still raises a serious question about the future of consumer feedback, if the consumer is fearful of leaving any feedback at all.

It’s amazing that someone would sue an individual for one “neutral” rating, but that goes to show just how important ratings are on eBay. It’s also scary that an attorney was willing to take on the case. What if the judge hadn’t shown any common sense? What if the court had ruled in favor of the plaintiff?

It may not have happened this time, but you can bet that this case will inspire someone to think they can remove legitimate negative (neutral?) customer feedback by taking them to court. And it will be a scary time for all, should a naive judge rule in favor of the company.

By David Ganz for Numismaster 

Battle of the learned societies has begun at the Hispanic Society of America launched a broadside against its former neighbor, the American Numismatic Society, seeking the return of 38,000 coins the ANS has been cataloging since the death of Arthur Milton Huntington in 1955 at age 85.

Huntington was a major benefactor, multimillionaire, and philanthropist who largely funded Audubon Terrace in New York City’s Washington Heights at the turn of the 20th century. Among the organizations that he sponsored were the American Numismatic Society, and Hispanic Society of America, the American Geographic Society, and other learned organizations dedicated to scholarly analysis of the arts and sciences.

In 1948, the Hispanic Society of America collection consisting of some 30,000 coins, many of which were hammer-struck, including many of the ancient world, was placed on deposit with the ANS, making it the finest collection of its kind in the Americas. That is the source of the 2008 legal controversy.

Founded in 1858, the American Numismatic Society celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2008, having recently moved to Fulton Street in the New York financial district. It is preparing to abandon the new building in favor of a downtown location on the west side of Manhattan.

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