The Trouble With Treasure

By Sylvester Monroe/Key West

Ever since he discovered what he claimed was $400 million in sunken treasure in 1985 off the coast of Key West, Fla., Mel Fisher has been no stranger to controversy. It visited him again last week when a Florida coin expert determined that a number of coins being sold through Fisher's museum were fakes. The county attorney has warned concerned customers that others may be too. The coins, purportedly taken from a Spanish galleon fleet lost in a hurricane off the Florida Keys in 1733, are genuine gold but not necessarily authentic, even though buyers received certificates from Fisher and his firm attesting to their age and origin. For example, a coin purchased for $5,900 may be worth only $272.50 based on current gold prices.

Authorities, however, have yet to file charges against Fisher, who at 75 is in poor health. The treasure hunter, who received widespread fame with the discovery of the 1622 wreck of the Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de Atocha in 1985, says he no longer personally dives for the coins. But Fisher is adamant that he has sold no fakes. "The whole thing is absolutely baloney," he says. "There are thousands of different markings on these coins, and no one could ever counterfeit one of them because they are all different. These coins are absolutely real." A similar controversy over silver dollars was resolved after Fisher flew to Mexico City and searched colonial dungeons to find the original dies from which the coins were struck. "I may have to go to Mexico again and look at the dies to prove these coins are real," says Fisher. "But I will be vindicated."

--By Sylvester Monroe/Key West