The sea has had these long enough.
A private archive built by one collector - obsessively, deliberately, across decades and oceans. Not every wreck has surrendered its coin yet. But I'm working on it.
The ‘Titanic’ of the Far East
NGC certifies the first documented coins from the 1874 S.S. Japan shipwreck.
DeepSea Numismatics, in partnership with historian Captain Robert S. Wells (USN, Ret.) and numismatist Matthew Tavory, announced the first NGC-certified coins from the wreck of the Sidewheel Steamer Japan - the largest documented loss of Chinese immigrant life on an American vessel in history.
“The most significant and only known concentration of S.S. Japan Trade dollars in existence.”- Coin World Staff
One coin from every known wreck.
A lifelong undertaking to hold one authenticated piece from every documented shipwreck the sea has surrendered. Each coin is researched, attributed, and tied to the vessel that carried it.
Collector first. Nothing enters the vault without provenance. No exceptions.
See the Mission
Featured Stories
A Coat That Walked the Frontier.
Perry Engle - Maryland to Kansas, four feet of buffalo hide, ten pounds of armor against the cold.
A 100-days man in the 3rd Maryland, a Kansas homestead, and a buffalo and beaver robe coat that outlived him by a century.
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The SS Japan
An iron steamer of the Lincoln era. A wreck the ocean kept.
Pacific Mail's flagship, the Chinese laborers she carried, and the 1874-CC Trade Dollars recovered from her.
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One Fare. 24,000 Miles.
The Oakland, Brooklyn & Fruitvale R.R. token - and the family that earned it.
An 1871 copper transit token, a 1846 voyage around Cape Horn, and the 3rd great-grandfather who connects them.
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Not a Coin. But Every Bit as Much History.
A French naval boarding cutlass, Chatellerault, July 1841 - carrying the V-shaped nicks of blade-on-blade combat.
Le Sabre d'Abordage M1833 - the most copied naval boarding weapon of the 19th century. The U.S. Navy modeled their Civil War cutlass on it.
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"The ocean had not erased her - it had kept her."
More from the dives, the shows, and pieces in progress.