About C's Coin Collection

What we cover

This site is about Spanish colonial coins and the Florida waters where so many of them ended up. We explain the money itself, the silver reales and gold escudos, the piece of eight and the doubloon, and the rough hand-struck cobs that made up the treasure fleets. We give tools to identify a coin and to understand its value in honest ranges. And we cover the Florida story: the 1715 Treasure Fleet, the Treasure Coast, and what to do if you find a coin on a beach.

How we source and check facts

Every page lists the sources it leans on. For the coins and the history, we use standard references such as the published accounts of the Spanish dollar, the Spanish colonial real, and the 1715 fleet, along with established identification guides. For value, we cite named dealer catalogues and specialist auction records, and we treat dealer asking prices as what they are, the top of the range rather than the middle. Where a figure is a range, we present it as a range and say why.

We are careful about the line between what is known and what is not. Coin values move, provenance is easy to claim and hard to prove, and some legal questions have no simple answer. When something needs checking against the responsible authority, such as Florida find law, we point you to it, the Florida Division of Historical Resources, rather than pretend to settle it ourselves.

Independent, and not a dealer

C's Coin Collection is independent. We do not sell coins, we do not appraise them, and we do not take a cut of any sale. That is the point of the site. The pages that rank highest for these coins are usually written by the people selling them, who have a reason to quote the high number. Because we sell nothing, we can give you the plain version: what a coin is, and the honest spread of what it is worth.

Not affiliated with any museum

We want to be clear about our name and domain. This site is not affiliated with Dale Chihuly, the Chihuly Collection in St. Petersburg, or any museum, gallery, or artist. The domain was acquired second-hand, and it previously belonged to an unrelated organization. Nothing here is endorsed by, or connected to, any prior owner of the domain. We are a numismatic reference and nothing more, and we make no claim on anyone else's name or trademark.

Corrections

We fix mistakes. If you spot an error, a wrong date, a misread mint mark, or a value that no longer holds, email editor@chihulycollectionstpete.com and we will review it. We note substantive corrections on the page they affect, and we date our pages so you can see how current they are. Coins and their prices change, and we would rather be corrected than wrong.