NOVEMBER 2
2018•Treasure Auction Opens With Shipwreck Gold and U.S. Rarities
2012•2012 ATB Quarters Circulating Set Announced
Treasure Auction 24 Opens in Orlando with Shipwreck Gold, Historic Cobs, and U.S.-Minted Cuban Rarities
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On November 2, 2018, Daniel Frank Sedwick LLC opened Treasure, World, U.S. Coin & Paper Money Auction 24 in Orlando, Florida, beginning a multi-session sale that brought together shipwreck treasure, early American-made coinage for foreign nations, colonial-era cobs, world coins, United States coins, paper money, medals, and maritime artifacts. The event ultimately realized more than $3.1 million, then a record for the firm, and demonstrated how modern numismatics can connect objects separated by centuries, oceans, mints, and shipwrecks in a single marketplace.
November 2 was the first live auction day. Four sessions were scheduled that Friday: gold cobs and world gold coins at 9:30 a.m.; shipwreck ingots and shipwreck coins at 12:30 p.m.; silver cobs at 5 p.m.; and world silver coins at 8 p.m. U.S. coins and paper money followed on November 3, while an internet-only express session took place November 5.
Although this is a modern auction event rather than a minting anniversary or an act of Congress, Auction 24 is unusually useful as a window into the breadth of numismatics. Its lots ranged from coins struck at the dawn of the New World minting tradition to gold recovered from famous wrecks, coins made by the Philadelphia Mint for Cuba, and a United States double eagle recovered from the wreck of the S.S. Brother Jonathan.
A Numismatic Auction Built Around History
Coin auctions are often described in terms of grades, estimates, pedigrees, and prices realized. Treasure Auction 24 had all of those things, but its identity depended heavily on provenance. Many pieces were important not only because of rarity or condition but because their histories could be traced to particular mints, collections, ships, recoveries, and historical episodes.
That distinction is especially visible in shipwreck numismatics. A gold or silver coin recovered from a documented wreck carries two overlapping histories. The first is the history of the coin itself: where it was struck, under whose authority, in what denomination, and for what economy. The second begins when the coin was placed aboard a ship and ends, sometimes centuries later, when salvors recovered it from the sea.
Sedwick’s specialty in Spanish colonial and shipwreck material made Auction 24 a particularly concentrated example of this form of collecting. The catalog included material associated with the 1715 Fleet, the Nuestra Señora de Atocha, the pirate ship Whydah, the S.S. Brother Jonathan, and other wrecks.
Four Sessions on November 2
The first day began with gold. Session I contained lots 1 through 245, divided between gold cobs and world gold coins. The second session moved directly into maritime material: shipwreck ingots and hundreds of shipwreck coins. Session III focused on silver cobs from Mexico City, Lima, Potosí, and other mints. Session IV closed the day with world silver coins.
This organization told a story of its own. A bidder could move from hand-struck Spanish colonial gold to recovered treasure, then into silver coinage produced across the Spanish American world, all in the course of one day.
The sale continued November 3 with medals and decorations, ancient coins, U.S. coins, U.S. paper money, world paper money, coin jewelry, shipwreck artifacts, other artifacts, and documents. An additional internet-only session on November 5 pushed the total offering beyond 2,300 lots.
For an American coin-history calendar, one of Auction 24’s most interesting offerings was not technically United States coinage at all. It was a six-denomination set of Cuban gold pesos dated 1915 and struck by the Philadelphia Mint for the Republic of Cuba.
The set consisted of 1-, 2-, 4-, 5-, 10-, and 20-peso coins. All were designed by U.S. Mint Chief Engraver Charles E. Barber, one of the central figures in American coin design around the turn of the twentieth century.
Five of the six coins—the 1, 2, 4, 10, and 20 pesos—were recognized by NGC as Specimen strikes. Contemporary auction reporting described them as the only known Specimen examples for those denominations. The 5-peso coin was not designated Specimen, but it was graded NGC MS 66+ and described as the finest graded for its type at the time.
The group provided a reminder that the U.S. Mint’s historical role extended beyond manufacturing money for the United States. American facilities also produced coinage for foreign governments, making some “world coins” part of U.S. Mint history.
A Result Far Beyond the Estimates
The Cuban gold pieces were sold individually but purchased by the same bidder. Together they realized $473,025 including the buyer’s premium, compared with a combined low estimate of $49,000. The 20-peso Specimen alone realized $130,900.
Those results helped propel the entire auction above $3.1 million. Sedwick later called it the firm’s largest sale to that point.
The dramatic difference between estimate and result illustrates a recurring truth in rare-coin auctions: genuinely unusual material can be difficult to price before bidders compete. Published estimates provide guidance, but a unique or nearly unique object may establish its real market level only when committed collectors confront one another in an open sale.
Another headline piece was lot 5, a Mexico City gold 8 escudos dated 1715 and recovered from the famous 1715 Fleet. The fleet was destroyed by a hurricane off Florida’s east coast on July 31, 1715 while carrying enormous quantities of treasure from the Spanish Americas.
The coin was notable for more than its wreck provenance. It had an unusually even, round planchet and a strong strike, attributes that distinguished it from the irregular appearance commonly associated with hand-struck cobs. Graded NGC MS 64, it realized $50,575.
Its history joined several chapters of the Americas into one object: Spanish colonial monetary production in Mexico, transatlantic imperial commerce, a catastrophic Florida shipwreck, twentieth-century salvage, and the modern certified-coin market.
Some lots made the scale of colonial treasure tangible in a way individual coins cannot. Auction 24 offered large silver bars recovered from the Nuestra Señora de Atocha, the Spanish treasure ship lost in a hurricane near the Florida Keys in 1622.
Two major bars, lots 256 and 257, weighed more than eighty troy pounds each. They realized $59,500 and $56,525 respectively. Both carried Mel Fisher provenance documentation, linking them to one of the most famous treasure-salvage operations in American history.
The auction also included a remarkable mass of more than twenty-five silver cobs still encrusted onto a ballast stone from the Atocha. Rather than being separated and cleaned into individual coins, the group survived as an archaeological-looking mass. Its importance was partly numismatic and partly material: it showed how coins could actually be found after centuries underwater.
That lot realized $18,000 before buyer’s premium according to the archived auction listing.
The Whydah: Money from a Pirate Ship
Few numismatic provenances are more evocative than the Whydah. Originally a slave ship, it was captured by pirate Samuel “Black Sam” Bellamy and became his flagship. It sank off Cape Cod in 1717.
Barry Clifford discovered the wreck in 1984, and material recovered from it eventually entered museums and private collections. Auction 24 included a Mexico City cob 8 reales dated 1715 recovered from the Whydah. It realized $13,090 including the buyer’s premium.
The day before the auction, Clifford was scheduled to speak at the event about the discovery. That connection between recovered object and the person responsible for locating the wreck underscores why treasure collecting often overlaps archaeology, maritime history, and numismatics.
Lot 664 reached much farther back into New World coinage. It was a Mexico City Charles-and-Joanna 3 reales from the early series, attributed to assayer Rincón and struck during the formative period of the first mint in the Americas.
The coin was graded NGC VF 30 and described in the catalog as an exceptionally important and rare variety, with waves beneath the pillars. The catalog connected it to experimental early 3-reales production and described it as among the earliest coinage of the Mexico City Mint and the New World.
Its hammer price was $70,000; reported with the buyer’s premium, the result was $83,300.
That result is notable because the coin was not valuable simply for precious metal or high numerical grade. Its importance came from rarity, early mint history, unusual design features, and its place in the development of coinage in the Americas.
An 1865-S Double Eagle from the Brother Jonathan
The sale also connected directly to U.S. federal coinage through an 1865-S Liberty Head $20 double eagle recovered from the S.S. Brother Jonathan.
The steamship struck a rock and sank off Crescent City, California, on July 30, 1865. Only nineteen people survived; more than two hundred died. The disaster became one of the great maritime tragedies of the American West Coast.
The auction’s double eagle was struck at the San Francisco Mint, graded PCGS AU58, and carried documented Brother Jonathan recovery provenance. Its catalog description tied the coin to the wreck and even recorded an inventory recovery number. The piece realized a $7,500 hammer price, or $9,520 with the auction’s 19-percent buyer’s premium.
For collectors, such a coin occupies several categories at once: it is a Civil War-era U.S. gold coin, a San Francisco Mint issue, a recovered treasure coin, and a surviving artifact of a deadly American shipwreck.
Auction 24 repeatedly demonstrated the importance of provenance. Two coins of the same date, mint, denomination, and grade may not be viewed identically if one has a documented connection to a famous wreck or collection.
Provenance can serve several purposes. It can help establish authenticity and ownership history. It can connect an object to a recognized discovery or collection. It can also transform the way collectors understand the piece. An 1865-S double eagle is already a historical object; an 1865-S double eagle known to have spent more than a century on the seafloor inside the wreck of the Brother Jonathan carries an additional documented biography.
At the same time, responsible collecting requires careful documentation. A romantic story alone is not provenance. Labels, certificates, recovery records, prior catalogs, photographs, grading-service designations, and an unbroken ownership trail can all strengthen a claim.
From Hand-Struck Cobs to Certified Slabs
The auction also illustrated how the coin market itself has changed. Many of the earliest coins in the sale were produced in a world where blanks were prepared by hand and dies were struck manually. Shape and centering varied widely. Centuries later, those same coins could be encapsulated by third-party grading companies, photographed digitally, cataloged online, and offered simultaneously to bidders around the world.
That contrast is striking. A cob that once traveled by mule, wagon, and sailing ship could now be purchased with an internet bid in seconds.
Modern certification also gives collectors a standardized vocabulary for condition and attribution, but specialist knowledge remains essential. For cobs and shipwreck pieces, mint, assayer, die variety, visible portions of the date, weight, corrosion, provenance, and recovery history may matter as much as a conventional numerical grade.
At first glance, an auction dominated by Spanish colonial and Latin American material might appear peripheral to a calendar devoted to American coin history. In reality, the histories overlap constantly.
Spanish silver circulated widely in what became the United States and remained legally significant long after the establishment of the U.S. Mint. Spanish colonial monetary traditions influenced early American ideas about denominations and commerce. Treasure fleets sailed past and wrecked on shores that are now part of the United States. American salvors recovered their cargoes. U.S. mints struck coins for foreign governments. American collectors built major collections of Latin American coinage.
The Cuban gold set is a particularly clear example. The coins carried Cuban national designs and denominations, yet they were manufactured at Philadelphia and designed by the chief engraver of the United States Mint. Their story cannot be confined neatly to either “U.S.” or “world” coinage.
When the live sessions and November 5 internet session were finished, Auction 24 had generated more than $3.1 million in sales across more than 2,300 lots. Contemporary reports described it as a record-breaking auction for Sedwick.
Several standout prices came from very different collecting areas. The Cuban Specimen gold set totaled $473,025. The early Mexico City 3 reales realized $83,300 including premium. Two enormous Atocha silver bars brought $59,500 and $56,525. A Cuzco 1837 gold 8 escudos graded NGC MS 64+ Prooflike realized $53,550. The 1715 Fleet Mexico City 8-escudos cob brought $50,575.
Rather than one famous rarity dominating the entire event, the results reflected demand across colonial, Latin American, shipwreck, gold, and specialized historical material.
The Auction Catalog as a Historical Record
Long after an auction ends, its catalog can remain valuable. A strong numismatic catalog records descriptions, weights, grades, varieties, pedigrees, estimates, photographs, and specialist observations. When prices realized are preserved as well, researchers gain a snapshot of both scholarship and the market at a specific moment.
Auction 24’s catalog included feature material on shipwreck histories and specialized coin varieties. Its table of contents alone reveals the sale’s breadth: gold cobs, world gold, shipwreck ingots, shipwreck coins, silver cobs, world silver, medals, ancient coins, U.S. coins, paper money, jewelry, artifacts, and documents.
For future researchers, such catalogs become part of the provenance chain. A coin appearing in a 2018 sale may reappear decades later, and the old catalog can help establish where it was, how it was described, and what characteristics were visible at the time.
November 2, 2018 is not comparable in national significance to the Coinage Act of 1792, the opening of a United States branch mint, or the release of a new circulating denomination. The master calendar itself flags this entry as a coverage filler and recommends replacement if a stronger documented U.S.-coin event can be found.
Live research for this article did not uncover a sufficiently strong, well-documented November 2 U.S.-coin anniversary to justify silently replacing the selected event. The Sedwick auction therefore remains the primary entry, but with its significance stated accurately rather than exaggerated.
Its value is that it captures the modern life of historical coins. Coins do not stop making history when they leave a mint. They circulate, travel, sink with ships, are recovered, enter collections, are studied and certified, and eventually return to the market. Auction 24 assembled extraordinary examples of those journeys in one place.
On November 2, collectors in Orlando and bidders around the world competed for objects whose stories stretched from the earliest minting in the Americas to twentieth-century U.S. Mint production for Cuba and famous shipwreck discoveries. The auction itself lasted only days. The histories represented in its lots spanned nearly five centuries.
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