A Florida Treasure Hunter Found This Gold Coin Worth $500,000 And I Just Looked At My Bank Account And Cried

This story is pretty straight forward: treasure hunter Eric Schmitt was diving in 15 feet of water with his metal detector, picked up a signal, and found a gold coin worth $500,000 and a total treasure haul worth over $1 million USD. Eric Schmitt is a treasure hunter who has brought in some ridiculously valuable artifacts over the past few years, artifacts that were spilled on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean when a fleet of Spanish ships sunk in July of 1715. The area of Florida in which these Spanish ships sunk and spilled hundreds of millions (billions) of dollars worth of gold coins and treasure into the sea is known as Florida’s ‘Treasure Coast’, and it’s been yielded unfathomable riches to treasure hunters over the years willing to put in the time it takes to find treasure.

Above is video shot on a GoPro, and it shows the exact moment that treasure hunter Eric Schmitt found the gold coin worth $500,000 (and other gold chains totaling $1 million). It was just sitting there on the bottom of the sea for anyone to find, for you to find if you were looking in the right place.

There’s still plenty of treasure on Florida’s Treasure Coast for any of you bros willing to get out there and look for it, but it will take hard work and lots of time looking before you find anything of value. And the chances that you ever find a single Spanish gold coin worth half a million doll hairs, well, that’s still pretty unlikely.

Already news of this massive treasure find has been making headlines across the world. When I came across this story last weekend I wasn’t so sure you bros would be interested in some bro from Florida getting incredibly lucky and finding a million dollars worth of Spanish gold at the bottom of the sea, but as I began to see almost every website on the Internet pick it up I figured it was probably of interest to some of you.

Desiree Stennett of The Orlando Sentinel reports:

Schmitt and his family found 52 gold coins worth more than $1 million. The star of the haul was an extremely rare coin known as a “Tricentennial Royal” minted in 1715. It had been underwater since a fleet of Spanish ships foundered during a hurricane along Florida’s Treasure Coast 300 years ago, Schmitt said.
“These things were known as presentation pieces not meant to be circulated as currency,” Schmitt said.
That coin alone is worth about $500,000, according to Schmitt.
And according to Brent Brisben, co-founder of 1715 Fleet — Queens Jewels LLC, the company that owns the rights to dive at the wreckage site where the gold was found, the coin’s value comes from the fact that it is in nearly perfect condition and is a rarity.
Only about six of the coins are known to exist, Brisben said.
“It’s incredibly rare and incredibly valuable,” Brisben said. “It returned from the depths on its 300th birthday.”

For more on this story and the Schmitt family of treasure hunters be sure to follow the link above to The Orlando Sentinel!