Atocha coins

My husband found an Atocha coin at a pawn shop yesterday. He wanted to buy it for me for our anniversary. He was not sure it was authentic; it had a certificate signed by James Sinclair. He asked me to check the internet about him. We have been to Key West several times and visited the Mel Fisher museum. We wanted to buy one of them, but a good one goes for about 3 thousand dollars. That’s just a tad out of our price range. Anyway I checked the internet and found out he was a partner with Mel Fisher when the ship was found off of Key West. I found an email address for James and contacted him about the coin. I gave him all the information about it. He said to check the picture; the coin must match the picture exactly on the certificate. It must also contain a raised corporate seal. He said he would look it up, but he was having problems connecting to the internet and he was out in the Atlantic at the moment. Later that day he contacted me again, I guess he was able to connect finally and said the original certificate did not contain a picture or weight of the coin. When we took a closer look at the certificate it did not have a raised seal at all, the picture of the coin matched perfectly but was very poor quality. I emailed him back to thank him for all his help. He saved us from making a 900 dollar mistake. I thought that was very nice of him to take the time to help someone he did even know. What a nice person. To think someone out there is going to such lengths to steal from others whom have put so much effort and time in to finding these wondrous treasures. Blog at you later….Eva