Signed by Author!
Treasure Coins of the Nuestra Señora de Atocha and the Santa Margarita, Second Edition, provides detailed information about the silver reales “treasure” coins recovered from the 1622 fleet shipwrecks, including what the coins look like when first discovered, how they are cleaned, conserved, and graded, what they were worth in the 17th century, the meaning of the various markings, how to identify a coin’s mint of origin, and the names and periods of office of the assayers who were responsible for guaranteeing coins of legal weight and purity and whose initials were mandated to be stamped on them. This Second Edition significantly expands on the 2010 edition, with added back-stories on the founding of the minting houses, more historic images, and updated, comprehensive assayer information, including source citations.
All the mint and assayer information detailed in Treasure Coins of the Nuestra Señora de Atocha & the Santa Margarita also applies to São José 1622 shipwreck coins and all other hand-struck Spanish Colonial coins of this period.
Carol Tedesco bio:
Since the 1990s, Carol Tedesco has worked in various capacities with shipwreck projects in the Caribbean, North, South and Central America, the Pacific and Africa, providing services for some of the most prominent underwater exploration companies in the world. She is a founding member of the International Conventions of Historians and Numismatists and is considered a foremost authority on 1622 fleet silver coins.
Carol’s publications include: Treasure Coins of the Nuestra Senora de Atocha and the Santa Margarita (2010 and 2022), the monographs, The Deep-Sea Dry Tortugas Shipwreck, Florida, 1622: the Silver Coins (2013), and Untangling the Record: A contemporary review of Potosi and Lima mint coins and assayer history from the mint openings up to 1622 (2022); and multiple magazine articles including, Exploring the Journey of Dutch Lead Seals on a Spanish Colonial Shipwreck in the Florida Straits (Popular Archaeology, 2011); Illuminated Treasure (X-Ray Mag, 2011) and Stones of Green and Other Treasures (X-Ray Mag, 2010), an examination of pre-Columbian greenstone artifacts recovered from 1622 fleet shipwrecks.
As a foremost authority on Spanish Colonial coinage from the lost 1622 Tierra Firme fleet, Carol Tedesco has provided an up-dated history of the mints and assayers represented on over 200,000 silver coins excavated from the Nuestra Señora de Atocha and Santa Margarita shipwreck sites. Her meticulous study stretching over the last three decades has been augmented by several prominent Latin American archival historian/numismatists who, in the spirit of advancing the body of knowledge, have contributed significant research data to fill in known gaps in the New World coinage. This numismatic "tour de force" is a major archaeological contribution in the documentation of the 1622 artifact assemblage, which tells a unique research story of underwater discovery to be enjoyed by history buffs, academic scholars, and numismatists around the world interested in the Spanish Colonial maritime cultural heritage of the Americas.
Duncan Mathewson III PhD
Marine Archaeologist