Hundreds of items recovered from shipwrecks, including cannons, crockery, and other treasures are being put up for auction from the Shipwreck Treasure Museum, Charlestown, Cornwall. November 4th 2024. Coal from the Titanic is going on sale - with hundreds of items from shipwrecks including cannons and crockery. The 700 marine artefacts dating back to the 1500s are housed at the Shipwreck Treasure Museum in Charlestown, Cornwall. Sir Tim Smit, founder of the Eden Project, bought the museum 10 years ago and is now selling the items and the building. The sale includes 46g of coal from onboard the Titanic, valued at £400 to £600.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00I'm David Lay, an auctioneer. I started my business when I was in my 20s and I'm still
00:14going. We've been asked to sell the contents of this museum. This museum has been going
00:20a long time, but the owners have decided that the conditions here are not really right for
00:25storing rare valuable artefacts and they've decided they haven't got the money to invest
00:33in new climate control cabinets and that sort of thing. So they've put it on the market.
00:39They've tried hard to sell it as a going concern, but they haven't been successful. So I'm going
00:47to sell the contents and then they'll sell the building as a vacant premises. We've got
00:53some coal here from the Titanic that has been scraped up from the ocean floor. That's caused
01:00a bit of interest. There are American buyers who seem to like that, but there are 700,
01:07800 lots here covering such a range of things. Lots of people like ship's lamps, lots of
01:16people like ancient ingots of tin and copper that have been taken up from the ocean floor.
01:25There's an awful lot here. There's a piece of rope from the Mary Rose, Henry VIII's flagship.
01:33That will make quite some thousands, I think. It's all online. The auctioneers are Lay's
01:40Auctioneers of Penzance and the sale is a two-day sale this Wednesday and Thursday.