Treasure hunter family finds $300,000 worth of 300-year-old Spanish gold off Florida coast

[flamingdem]

* better than shelling on Captiva!


A family has discovered $300,000-worth of 300-year-old Spanish gold chains and coins during a sea scavenge off the Florida coast.

The Schmitt family and a diver, Dale Zeak, found three pounds of thin gold chains, five gold coins and a gold ring just 15 feet below the surface 150 yards off the coast of Fort Pierce this weekend.

The family runs a company named Booty Salvage but this is the biggest loot they've ever found.

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Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2410051/Florida-family-finds-gold-Treasure-hunters-discover-300k-300-year-old-Spanish-gold.html#ixzz2dwuGvqRm

[boomer55]

1. gonna guess they've spent way more than that on equipment n/t

[flamingdem]

2. It looks like a pricey hobby

but one that pays for it$elf, over time anyway.

[HooptieWagon]

3. perhaps, perhaps not.

People still find doubloons in the surfline with $100 metal detectors.
Many galleons were wrecked along Fla's east coast. No lighthouses then, low coastline difficult to see at night, strong Gulfstream current made navigation difficult, a strong easterly gale or hurricane would drive the ships ashore with little warning. Sometimes the Spanish could salvage some of the treasure, sometimes "wreckers" beat them to it, but there's a lot still there. Many of the shipwreck sites are known, but the treasure is scattered during the shipwreck and centuries of storms. Its buried under the sand, sometimes a storm uncovers some that gets washed up into the surfline.

[NightWatcher]

4. I know of a wreck off Jupiter that is supposed to have silver bars

It's marked as an exclusion zone on dive charts and dredge maps.