US Minted Phillipine Peso interest

islemangu

Living on the US Territory of Guam in the western pacific, there are some old timers that never went back home after serving in the asian wars out here. An oldtimer showed me a bundle of dark toned pieces that he claims they deposited the silver treasury of coins into the ocean before the Japanese occupied and then once gone pulled them all back up. I wondered if all true but did make sense. The silver dollar sized coins had almost black toning on them in whole or partial. Is this typical of submerged sea water toning? Has anyone heard of this story?

CarlWohlforth

At the beginning of fighting in the Pacific during WWII the Japanese invaded the Philippines. Before they got to Manila the Philippine Treasury dumped literally tons of sliver coins into Manila bay to keep them out of Japanese hands.

My wife bought one of the silver peso coins recovered from Manila bay. The coin is untoned. I have no idea if it was cleaned or not. It is heavily worn by the sea water. However it apparently had another coin resting on it. So there is a crescent shaped area that is well preserved where the coin was protected from the sea by another coin.

I think it is a very interesting and historical coin.

Clankeye

Yes, it is a true story. And you see a lot of Philippines/American coins offered for sale as "sea salvaged."

The Pesos and Centavos are very beautiful coins IMO, and very hard to find in high mint state. Most of the ones I have seen have been harshly cleaned. I just got back from a show yesterday, and every Peso I saw was like that.

At any rate that they dumped alot of the coinage in the sea before the Japanese occupation is a true story. It's a very interesting series.

Clankeye