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Wednesday, May 7, 2025

5/8/25 Report - Extensive Research on Early Spanish Exploration of Florida. Couple Surprising Treasures. Investing in Gold.


Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.


Two Views of Same Bottle.

Before reading on, try to guess how old this bottle is?  I think you might be surprised.  

This is a bottle in the currently running Sedwick auction.  Below is the lot listing.


Glass powder-bottle with pewter cap, intact, ex-Guadalupe-Tolosa (1724). 154 grams. 4½" x 2½" x 2". Lovely delicate eight-sided bottle with opaque and pearlized hand-blown glass, completely intact with even its original cap (now frozen in place) and dried contents inside. From the Guadalupe-Tolosa (1724), with original certificate from Captain Tracy Bowden through his contract with the Dominican Republic and copy of the article "Graveyard of the Quicksilver Galleons" by Mendel Peterson from the December 1979 issue of National Geographic.

Did you guess that his bottle is from the early 18th century?  That is pretty good if you did.  It has a pewter top, which I would like to see more of.

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Here is a great document -  THE ADELANTAKTENTO OF FLORIDA:1565-1568, a dissertation by Eugene Lyon. You probably know of Eugene Lyon, an important historian that has conducted a lot of important research on the Spanish colonial period and shipping. 

Below is the table of contents.




With the appendices and other materials, the work is over 400 pages.

If you are interested in the early exploration of Florida, here are a couple links.


And

Adelantamiento of Florida: 1565-1568 : Lyon, Eugene, 1929- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

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I was browsing the Sedwick auction yesterday before the auction went live.  I noticed the bottle shown above and some other lots that surprised me.  Among other things, the were a lot of Disney dollars in the auction, such as the one shown below.





I've talked about Disney collectible finds before, but never expected to see Disney Dollars in a Sedwick treasure auction.  Nonetheless, there are a number in this auction.  It seems the lots included in the Sedwick auctions have been becoming more varied.  

I've always been one that thought it wise to be informed on a wide variety of types of treasure, but this is one I've never thought much about before.

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If you gauge the health of an investment by its price and the interest in it, then gold has to be at the top of the list in recent years. Not only did gold investing surge to an 11-year high in 2023, but the price of the precious metal shattered numerous records in 2024. And that price surge continued in the early months of 2025. Now priced at $3,324.57 per ounce, gold is up by 61% when compared to the price it started 2024 at. And there are strong indications that the price could continue to rise in the weeks and months to come...

Here is a link for the pros and cons of investing in gold bars and coins.


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Good hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
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