Pirate Treasure!

When my mother was seventeen, she found a strange coin on a beach near our house. She has kept it, but never tried to figure out what it was. She thought it was interesting, and might have some value. For the last two decades it has just been sitting on a shelf in our house.

Today, I found out what it was.

I was in the library, not thinking of the coin but randomly browsing when I came across what looked to be a fun book (complete with neat prints!) called 'Pirates and Buccaneers of the Atlantic Coast'(Snow, 1944). It looked amusing. I brought it home, forgot about it, and then an hour ago I was flipping through the plates and came across one titled: "Pirate Treasure from the Sands of Cape Cod".

The gold and silver Spanish coins looked breathtakingly similar to the one that had lived the last few years on a shelf in my house. I quickly turned to the part about the ship that had carried the treasure. It was the Whydah, a famous pirate ship that wrecked off the coast nearby:

"The wreck has not been seen above water for over half a century, but it cannot be denied that the old ship, along with Captain Bellamy's treasure of around $100,000 in bullion, is still buried in the shifting sands of Cape Cod."

My hands began to tingle. The beach my mother had found the coin on was only a stone throw away from the Cape. Could this really be pirate gold from a famous wreck?

Being a true child of the 21st century, I hopped on the internet. I googled 'pirate treasure' and hit gold.

Literally.

Our coin is gold and in fairly good condition. I can still make out the stamp on either side. It was definitely Spanish, complete with the royal Spanish coat of arms and a 'Jerusalem Cross' on the back.

I found a coin made in 1739 that is identical to the one we have, except ours is earlier. The one on the page sold for $6900.00 US in 2005. See: #05-1599, http://atochatreasures.com/Pirate%20Treasure%20Coins.htm

$6900.00 people!!!

I'm having a heart attack.

If it was really from the Whydah, that would just be the icing on the cake.

I looked at the date: 1730. Too late for the Whydah, which wrecked in 1717. Our coin is from a later wreck.

Googling onward...

Side note: Anyone else think the dichotomy presented here between pirate gold from the sixteenth century and the twenty-first century technology used to ID it is amusing?

A chasm of five centuries has just been crossed in minutes.

God bless the internet.