The E-Sylum:  Volume 5, Number 16, April 14, 2002, Article 4

TITANIC NUMISMATIC ARTIFACTS BEING SOLD?

  From an April 12, 2002 article in The Wall Street Journal:
  "Who owns the relics of the Titanic?":

  "An Atlanta salvage company that raised thousands of
  artifacts from the famous shipwreck is battling in federal
  court for the right to sell them -- even though it won its
  initial salvage rights in part by telling a judge they wouldn't
  be sold.  Seeking to block the proposed multimillion-dollar
  auction: a man whose great-grandmother's love letters were
  among the items recovered.

  The legendary ocean liner left the port of Southampton,
  England, on its maiden voyage 90 years ago this week and
  sank on April 15, 1912. An American-French expedition
  found the wreck in 1985. RMS Titanic Inc., a salvage
  company formed two years later, won the rights to excavate
  the area surrounding the shipwreck in 1994, over the
  objections of some survivors of the tragedy and their
  descendants."

  The article pictured a $5 note from the California National
  Bank of Sacramento.  Given that "a moldy cookie from the
  ship brought $5,146 at a Sotheby's auction last year, and
  Christie's auctioned a dinner menu in 1999 for a robust
  $31,280,"  it's anybody's guess what some of the numismatic
  items might one day bring at auction.

  From the salvor's web site (see
  http://www.rmstitanic.net/titanic/expeditions/artifacts.html)
  comes this description of a leather bag and its contents:
  "When this travel bag was found, it was filled with jewels,
  watches, coins and currency.  Historians speculate the
  purser may have filled this bag with the contents of one of
  the safes, or perhaps a thief was looting the cabins as the
  ship was sinking.  Leather survives very well at the wreck
  site, as it is indigestible to the deep-sea organisms."

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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