At the Tucson Gem and Mineral show today I ran across a display vendor that is picking up where Mel Fisher left off searching for treasure off Florida

After chatting with the owner for awhile I asked if I could pick up some of the gold doubloons and he put several in my hand

It was pretty cool to hold gold coins that were once treasure on it way to Spain

Autocorrect changed "da balloons"...

Neat!

I bought my wife a silver coin necklace from the Mel Fischer museum in Key West. It's not an actual coin from the wreck (those were expensive), but it is made from silver recovered from the Atocha.

I held a coin that was 50-65BC, There are alot of affordable really ancient coins, always meant to buy one.

On our Israel tour, we of course went to Bethlehem, where the few remaining Christians struggle to make ends meet by selling stuff to tourists. They had quite a few old coins; IIRC a “widow’s mite” would set you back a Benjamin.

Yes lots of Roman and Greek coins there but gold always catches your eye. They are packing up their display at the tent on Tuesday and moving to the convention center for the final weekend. Hoping to go back.

They were not keen on photos. Some had explicit signs and if no signs were posted I always asked.

Last week I had the original Ted Bundy case files in my hand.

Seemed kind of cool in a weird way…

At the Mel Fisher museum in Key West in 1990 I put my hand in a hole in the wall to lift a gold bar from the Atocha.

I traded in to getting a $1 gold coin from the 1800s. I asked about how small it was and they said it was the smallest (diameter) coin that the US has ever minted.

Before that my smallest had a face value of three cents and made from silver.

I thought to myself that with that thing being so small, I'd probably lose it.

If I lost a whole dollar back then I'd be ticked off.

Several years ago, I got meet and hangout with Ryan Berube. He was a swimmer and freestyle specialist. He anchored the 4x200 freestyle relay in Atlanta in 1996 when they won the gold. He had brought his gold medal with him and I got to actually hold it! That was pretty awesome.

One added surprise: they may not be solid gold but they are heavy. Looking it up, they are gold-plated silver. While they vary from one Olympics to the next, I found online that the Tokyo Summer Games gold medals weighed about 1.25 pounds. That's pretty close to what Ryan's weighed.