If you will be in the Los Angeles area between February 22nd and 24th, 2018, you will be able to see gold coins, bars and dust that had been at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean for over 150 years. The public will be able to see over $50,000,000 of gold that was originally on the SS Central America in 1857.
You can click on the link at the bottom of this article for more information about the SS Central America, but he is a brief synopsis. With gold discovered in California, the US mint opened a new branch in San Francisco in 1854, to make gold coins and bars. To get gold to Eastern banks, coins, bars and dust were put on a ship. The ship sailed to Panama where the gold was moved across the short isthmus, and put on a second ship, the SS Central America, bound for the East Coast of the United States. On September 9, 1857, the ship met up with a hurricane of the coast of the Carolinas. The ship would eventually sink with only 153 passengers surviving. Of course, the gold sunk with the ship. With no gold reaching land, the country would go through a great panic.
The wreckage was first discovered by Tommy Thompson in 1988. He was able to get a group of investors to give him millions of dollars to search for the Central America. When it was discovered what Thompson was doing, insurance companies who claimed to insure the coins before the ship sank tried to sue him. However, Thompson and his investors won the case, but when the investors received nothing, they sued Thompson. Thompson would flee to Florida when the court tried to issue him a warrant when he didn’t appear. They finally caught up to him in 2015.
Chief scientist of the 1988 voyage, Bob Evans, has been cleaning all of the gold in preparation of it being displayed. Beginning on February 22nd, the gold will be displayed to the public at the Long Beach Convention Center in California. There had been 3,100 gold coins, 45 gold bars and over 80 pounds of gold dust discovered from the wreckage. Supposedly, all of the gold will be for sale, but don’t expect it to go cheap. Based on being underwater for over 150 years and the coins rarity, they could possibly go for $1,000,000 each.
We think about getting a rare 1909-S VDB Lincoln Cent or 1916-D Mercury Dime, but imagine getting one of these 1857 Gold Coins from the Central America. It would be the ultimate coin for your collection. I wish I could go, but if you have a chance, get to Long Beach and see a rare piece of American history.
As a child, I too sought out coins for my books. This site is run by a guy who kept going with that hobby and has been serious about it. Coin collecting can be as interesting as stamp collecting and just as frustrating, but this site tries to mitigate that with a FUN section where he made a coin game with two levels to play with. Humor works here, and the site intrigued me. There were good coin visuals and a “display case” feel to the home page. For the niche and the hobby, and possibly the business of coins this was useful, educational, and fun.
Thanks for the comment John! I’m glad you enjoyed my site. I hope others will like it like you described here.
How do you ad your affiliate links so it can be viewed as an ad? I like the way you have done it and would like to do it on my page.
Great Looking Site Overall! Easily Move between Pages, Great Layout, Simple, easy to understand.
Would you mind leaving comments on my site as well, it is still under construction. I apologize in advance for the lack of content!
Are you going through WA certification? If you are, Level 3 will help you find affiliates and add links to them. Depending on which affiliate you use will determine how you will do a link to them. Hopefully you’re in a state that can use Amazon Affiliate, which I’m not. You can probably find other affiliates for your niche.
One piece of advice I can give you: I have a spreadsheet on my laptop with link for different products I am talking about as well as links to each of my articles that I can use on other articles as related links.
Whatever you do, I wish you success. Let me know what your website is when it’s up.