(29 Jan 2018) LEADIN:
More than 50 million US dollars' worth of gold bars and coins, that sat at the bottom of the ocean for over 150 years, is set to go on display in California.
The treasure was recovered from the wreckage of the S.S. Central America in 1988, which sank in a hurricane about 200 miles (321 kilometres) off the South Carolina coast in 1857.
STORYLINE:
These 3,100 gold coins, 45 gold bars and more than 80 pounds of gold dust were recovered from the S.S. Central America's wreckage.
They're part of what's been described as the greatest lost treasure in American history.
The gold is now sitting in a makeshift laboratory, just south of Los Angeles.
Bob Evans, chief scientist on the original voyage that discovered the shipwreck containing the treasure in 1988, is now painstakingly cleaning each piece by hand.
He soaks the gold in a solution and brushes off rust and grime that accumulated as the treasure sat on the ocean floor for over 150 years.
"This is a whole new season of discovery," he says.
"We are now peering beneath the grime and the rust that is on the coins, removing those objects and those substances and getting to look at the treasure as it was in 1857."
Using sable paint brushes and a cleaning solution, Evans has been restoring the gold - some of which is completely caked over in black gunk - to its original lustre for the past two weeks.
He'll continue that work through February, when the treasure will go on public display at the Long Beach Convention Center, about 20 miles (32 kilometres) south of Los Angeles.
The gold is all for sale. Just one tiny coin alone could go for 1 million US dollars because of the combination of rarity and the history behind it, says Dwight Manley, managing partner of the California Gold Marketing Group, which is displaying and selling the gold.
"This is something that in hundreds of years that people will still be talking about, reading about, looking back on and collecting things from," says Manley.
"There's no other ships that sank that haven't been recovered that rival this or are similar to this, so it really is a once-in-a-lifetime situation."
Meanwhile the man responsible for finding the gold in the first place has been jailed for over two years over his handling of the original treasure recovered from the ship.
Treasure hunter and Ohio native Tommy Thompson found the S.S. Central America in 1988 after convincing 161 local investors to fund the voyage for nearly 13 million US dollars.
A lengthy battle ensued over who owned the gold, with Thompson and his investors eventually emerging as victors over a group of insurance companies.
Thompson's company sold 532 gold bars and thousands of coins to the California Gold Marketing Group for about 50 million US dollars in 2000.
Investors never saw any of those proceeds.
In 2005, they sued Thompson, who then went into seclusion in Florida and later became a fugitive after an Ohio judge issued a warrant for his arrest in 2012.
Authorities tracked Thompson down to a Florida hotel room in 2015.
A judge has held Thompson in contempt since December 2015 for violating terms of a plea deal by refusing to respond to questions about the location of 500 missing gold coins.
Thompson has previously said the coins were turned over to a trust in Belize. He has also said that the 50 million US dollars from the sale of the gold mostly went toward legal fees and bank loans.
The S.S. Central America, also known as the Ship of Gold, sank in a hurricane about 200 miles (321 kilometres) off the South Carolina coast in September 1857.
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