In the "ephemera" portion of my library is an audio tape I made at last year's ANA Convention in Portland, of John J. Ford's talk on Western Assay Bars. He mentioned the Central America recovery and described a gentlemen who became intrigued with the history of the makers of the pioneer gold coins and bars discovered on the shipwreck.

Using a magnifying glass, he studied the assayer's names on bars pictured in a magazine profile of the wreck. Then he went to the library. While poring through microfilms of contemporary newspapers, he began to assemble information on each of the assayers, then looked for any other documentary evidence he could find. Gradually, he gathered much heretofore unpublished information on these pioneer coiners.

The man's name is Dan Owen, and as Ford announced last year, his work is being published cooperatively by Stack's and Bowers and Merena. As noted by Dan in the Summer 1999 issue of The Brasher Bulletin, published by the Society of Private and Pioneer Numismatics (SPPN):

The book will be available this year. So, you think all the good numismatic research projects have already been done to death? Here's one that a non-numismatist picked up and made his own, discovering several stones left unturned by previous researchers. What other topics are ripe for a re-examination?