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May 28, 1999
Mandalay Bay among bidders for gold coins retrieved from shipwreck
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOS ANGELES -- A rare $10 gold coin from the Gold Rush era is on display today as auctioneers prepare for the weekend sale of treasure recovered from the deadliest shipwreck in California's history.
Experts consider the coin the prize of the 1,207 gold coins salvaged by a private company from the ill-fated Brother Jonathan, which sank in 1865. The 1865 coin, minted in San Francisco, contains a printing blunder and is one of only 36 known to exist.
The auction Saturday of the coin and about 1,000 others is expected to draw bidders from New York, Asia and Europe to Los Angeles to the Airport Marriott Hotel, organizers said.
"The quality of these coins is like they came straight from the mint," said Greg Roberts, a bidder representing the Mandalay Bay. "We've never seen anything like this before."
Roberts, who bought an 1804 silver dollar for a record $1.8 million in 1997, said the coins represent California's history and capture the spirit of the Gold Rush era, which began in 1849.
The Brother Jonathan, a wooden-hulled paddle steamer, sank July 30, 1865, about four miles off Crescent City. The ship, which carried sailors, miners, politicians and prostitutes, was headed for the Pacific Northwest, but struck a submerged rock.
Only 19 of the ship's 250 passengers survived, making it the worst maritime disaster in state history.
The ship's wreckage lay undisturbed for more than 120 years until El Cajon-based Deep Sea Research discovered it in the early 1990s. It had searched for the ship for two decades.
Its discovery brought on a protracted dispute over the vessel's treasure. Deep Sea, which spent more than $1 million to recover the ship, had to negotiate with two insurance companies that had paid claims from the wreck. The company eventually gained title to the ship.
But the state's Land Commission then entered the fray, engaging the salvage company in a lengthy legal dispute over ownership of the ship and its contents that made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The legal wrangling ended last year with an out-of-court settlement in which the state received 20 percent of the treasure -- 200 gold coins.
"Our whole purpose in the lawsuit, which took the better part of nine years, was to protect the historical shipwreck," said Peter Pelkofer, senior counsel of the California Lands Commission. "The money the state received is incidental. It's the historic and archaeological value that is of most concern."
The settlement left Deep Sea with the 1,006 coins that will be auctioned Saturday by Wolfeboro, N.H.-based Bowers and Merena. Another coin, encrusted with coral, was donated to a museum in Crescent City.
Roberts, who will represent Mandalay Bay at the auction, called Deep Sea's efforts to acquire ownership "a great American story."
He said Mandalay Bay was prepared to spend between $5 million and $10 million at the auction and would buy all the coins, if possible, for a museum at the casino.
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