Titanic gold

[jtryka]

Today I went to Barnes & Noble to get a whitman folder for Mercs since I decided that would be my next circ set, and in browsing the bargain bin, I came across a video tape of the Titanic Imax movie for $4.98 so I bought it. I watched it and it was really good, and one interesting thing they mentioned was the artifacts brought to the surface (I saw the exhibit in Las Vegas once), and they pointed out two items, a safe and a black White Star Line bag. The safe contained only 3 or 4 silver coins, but the bag had something like $60,000 in cash, mostly bank notes and gold coins. They showed some pictures of the notes, and they were large size national banknotes, but then they showed the gold, and it wasn't a very good shot, but it looked like quite a few double eagles and some very pretty Saints (pre-1913). It appears the safe was emptied to remove from the ship, but the bag never made it onto a lifeboat. Since it was leather, the contents really held up well, notably the paper money was in very good condition for being down there over 70 years. If anyone knows more about this bag, please share, as this film did not go into details.

[Coinosaurus]

I have seen some of the Titanic coins on exhibit in Chicago, but it was mostly really beat up silver and copper coinage, some from the UK, some from US. I have never heard of any significant amounts of gold coinage that was recovered, nor of the double eagles you mentioned, etc.