A federal judge said Wednesday that he would give Odyssey Marine Exploration and the Spanish government until the end of the week to settle their differences over the documentation the Florida treasure-hunting firm provided on the $500 million in gold and silver coins the company recovered last May.

“I think our position was well-understood by the court,” James Goold, the attorney representing Madrid, told Efe.

He said that Judge Mark A. Pizzo “did not issue any ruling,” but instead warned the parties in the hearing held Wednesday in Tampa that if they do not resolve their differences by Friday he will be obligated to intervene.

Goold said that Tampa-based Odyssey had not “supplied all the information that the court ordered” about the items salvaged from a colonial-era shipwreck code-named Black Swan.

Though the recovery took place in international waters, Madrid contends the company plundered Spanish cultural assets. Full Story

Odyssey Marine Exploration Named Sole Custodian for Shipwreck Site

TAMPA, Fla. — Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. (Nasdaq:OMEX) has been named the sole plaintiff in the in rem Admiralty case number 4:05-CV-122-D3 pending in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina after a U.S. District Judge granted the Joint Motion from Odyssey Marine Exploration and BDJ Discovery Group, LLC for “Substitution of Plaintiff.”

In 2005, BDJ Discovery Group filed the original arrest action against the Unidentified Shipwreck Vessel, its apparel, tackle, appurtenances and cargo located in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean approximately 12 miles off the coast of North Carolina.

BDJ Discovery Group, the company that originally discovered evidence of the site, brought the project to Odyssey in 2007 and an agreement was reached for Odyssey to take over all aspects of the project. BDJ has assigned all of its rights to the artifacts and any wreck from which they originate to Odyssey in return for up to 15% of any proceeds from artifact sales after archaeological excavation, conservation, marketing and certain other expenses.

“As other groups assess the real costs and challenges of shipwreck projects, including archaeological recovery, conservation, legal and marketing expenses, we’re being called more often on projects like these,” commented Greg Stemm, Odyssey CEO. “We have the experience, technical expertise and infrastructure required to effectively handle all aspects of virtually any shipwreck project that comes our way.” (more…)

France’s biggest trove of Gaulish coins has been unearthed in Brittany. Archeologists found them while searching along the route of a bypass under construction in the Côtes d’Armor. The coins are in the hands of specialist restorers and will go on display in the département.

The trove consists of 545 gold-silver-copper coins: 58 staters and 487 quarterstaters. ‘Stater’ is the generic term for antique coins. They lay a foot beneath the earth’s surface near Laniscat, 64km south of Saint-Brieuc, at a known Iron Age manor house or farm site, and date to 75- 50BC. They are very well preserved.

Inrap, the national institute for preventive archeological research, which has the right to investigate sites ahead of infrastructure work, reports similar finds in the 1930s at Guingamp and Perros-Guirec, but says the latest trove is the biggest yet. Searching ahead of construction work, an Inrapled team found a single coin about 30cm down, then began a systematic search.

They found another 50 coins the same day, then brought in metal detectors and found the rest. They believe the coins were all buried together but were disturbed over the centuries by ploughing. Read Full Story

A METAL detecting enthusiast has unearthed a Roman coin thought to be one of the oldest ever found in Wales.
Retired butcher Roy Page, 69, of Coedpoeth, found the detailed 2,000-year-old coin on a farm near St Asaph when he went on a search there with the Mold-based Historical Search Society.

Roy handed the tiny silver coin to the Portable Antiquities Scheme, who identified it as dating from the second century BC.

It is believed to have been brought over some time after the Roman invasion of Britain in 43 AD, or during earlier visits in the first century BC.

Roy, who has been metal detecting for five years, said: “The person who held the coin was probably a Roman.

“When he told me I nearly fainted, I was over the moon. I was told by an expert in our group that it could be the oldest coin found in Wales. Read Full Story

By JOHN STEELE GORDON for Barron’s

BECAUSE GOLD IS CHEMICALLY INERT, it doesn’t tarnish and it has few industrial uses. Because it has been a prime store of value for millennia, it has always been very carefully guarded. Because it is so extraordinarily valuable (a cubic inch of pure gold is currently worth more than $9,000), even long-lost gold is searched for diligently.

A hundred and sixty years ago this month, for instance, James Marshall was inspecting a new millrace in Northern California that he had just constructed for his employer, John Sutter. A pebble about half the size of a pea caught his eye. “It made my heart thump,” he later remembered, “for I was certain it was gold.”

In 1847, the United States had produced a mere 43,000 ounces of gold, mostly as a byproduct of base-metal mining. In 1853, California alone would produce more than three million ounces, then worth some $65 million. The total revenue of the federal government in 1853 was $61.5 million. Read Full Article