Sunken Profits

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So what makes it worthwhile to invest in this volatile sector? Well, there’s the thrill of watching the value of your stock rise, not because of new marketing strategies or improved mega mergers, but because coins minted around the time of America’s first Thanksgiving have just seen the light of day for the first time in nearly 400 years.

Long down periods between treasure finds while hunters work on researching a site and meticulously comb a potentially fertile area can create great difficulty in going public and finding investors. “Salvage operations are usually done on a project-per-project basis,” explains Eren. “Treasure is found once in a blue moon.”

One way for treasure-hunting companies, or historic salvage operators, to generate more steady revenue and attract investors is to exhibit finds. Take as a model RMS Titanic Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Premier Exhibitions Inc. (NASDAQ: PRXI), a company known primarily for its anatomically graphic “Bodies” exhibit. After retrieving thousands of artifacts from the Titanic, which lies miles beneath the ocean off the coast of Nova Scotia, the company launched an extensive exhibition tour they say has been viewed by nearly 15 million people.

Online sales are another option for a company, as are auctions through the major players such as Christie’s and Sotheby’s. “Using an auction house gives greater exposure, which leads to greater interest and higher prices,” says Eren. “There is also credibility. If Christie’s decides to sell, then people know it’s not fake and has been around longer than two weeks.”

If holding stock in a treasure-hunting company isn’t up close and personal enough, there’s always Mel Fisher’s Treasure, a mom–and-pop venture in the Florida Keys. This privately held company made it big in the 1980s when Mel Fisher’s 16-year search paid off, and he found $400 million in treasure in two sunken Spanish galleons.

The company, run by family of the now-deceased Fisher, annually forms a limited liability company and sells shares. The $2.8 million in yearly operating costs are met by dividing that sum into 35 shares sold for $80,000 each. While that’s a steep price, fractional shares are also available, with the lowest buy-in at one eighth of a share for $10,000. Each spring, the company throws a party, and invites investors down to Florida for a week-long party, where they can go on dives, dress as pirates for costume parties and receive their investment return, paid in kind with artifacts recovered that year.

Mel Fisher investment relations rep Joe Beaton says the worst an investor has done in a year with the company is a 10 percent return. “In 1985 we found the mother lode, which was valued at $400 million, and at that point there was an 80-to-one payment on investments,” he says. “There are big spikes.”

One of those spikes occurred in mid-June when Mel Fisher subcontractor Keith Webb of Blue Water Ventures found a cache of treasure that included gold bars and chains as well as pearls and other jewelry. But, adds Beaton, “It’s certainly not every day that we go out and find a pile of gold.”

The company has been excavating the Santa Margarita and Atocha, Spanish ships returning from the New World to Spain in 1622. When they went down in a hurricane, the treasure they were carrying was scattered along the bottom of the sea in a seven-mile trail as the ships slowly sank.

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