It would seem the company could be onto something big with the latest finds. I can't wait until the announce what they've found. What's interesting to me is that roughly 20% of the total treasure on these ships were in the form of contraband hidden all around the ships so if you had a 550 million $ wreck on average they would contain a 110 million $'s worth of gold or silver, That's a lot of money that could be on any part of the ship. I hope some of that contraband is in the area.
Well my 20% guess was close. And the price of gold and silver has gone up dramatically since this was written.
"Salvage efforts on the wrecks began immediately and by the end of December the officials in charge of the operation reported they had already recovered all the King’s treasure and the major part of that belonging to private individuals, totaling 5,200,000 pesos. The following spring they recovered an additional small amount, so that by July the Spaniards called a halt to their salvage efforts. When the Spaniards stopped their salvage work, a total of 1,244,900 pesos of registered treasure remained. Add an estimated 19% contraband, and we believe 2,200,000 pesos remain. Using a conservative sale price of $250 per coin, we feel over 550 million dollars of treasure remains to be recovered. Gold, which in terms of weight was sixteen times more valuable than silver, was the most common item smuggled back to Spain, and since there were almost no gold coins registered aboard the ships, those recovered in recent years from the wrecks must have been contraband. This is substantiated by the fact that most of the gold disks recovered lacked the required markings of registered gold bars. It is more than likely that a substantial amount was being smuggled in this convoy."
