American treasure hunters scored their largest haul in decades on Florida’s Treasure Coast, pulling 1,051 silver reales and five gold escudos from the seabed during the 2025 summer salvage season. The cache, linked to the fabled 1715 Spanish Treasure Fleet, carried an estimated value of about $1 million.
Captain Levin Shavers led the crew of the salvage vessel M/V Just Right, operated by 1715 Fleet – Queens Jewels LLC, which holds exclusive court-awarded rights to the wreck site. Divers used hand-held suction devices and metal detectors to remove layers of sand, uncovering stacks of coins that likely spilled from a single chest when the ship broke apart.
“Finding 1,000 coins at once in a single discovery is a very rare and extraordinary thing,” said operations manager Sal Guttuso, according to the Sun. He added that mint marks and dates from colonial Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia remained legible, enabling numismatists to trace the coins’ origins.
Under U.S. and Florida law, the state may claim up to 20 percent of any artifacts for public research or exhibition, while the remaining 80 percent is divided between Queens Jewels and its subcontractors once a federal judge approves the split.
Conservation began immediately. Technicians placed small batches of coins in reverse-electrolysis tanks to remove salt and corrosion, documented each piece under magnification, and logged exact GPS recovery coordinates before assigning point-based grades to determine value. Queens Jewels plans to loan the coins to local museums along the Treasure Coast after the state selects specimens for permanent display.
The find adds to a long list of recoveries along the 160-kilometer stretch between Melbourne and Fort Pierce, where a hurricane on July 31, 1715 sent eleven Spanish galleons and a French escort to the bottom. Historians estimate that treasure worth up to $400 million was lost and more than 1,000 sailors perished.
“Each coin offers a tangible connection to the people who lived and worked during the Spanish Empire,” Guttuso said, according to People. Company records show Spanish crews often packed silver coins in lots of 1,000, an arrangement consistent with the latest discovery.
At least five of the fleet’s eleven wrecks have yet to be found, and Queens Jewels intends to resume exploration when the next permitted season opens in May. Some of the newly recovered coins could fetch as much as $250,000 apiece on the collectors’ market.
Written with the help of a news-analysis system.