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08/03/2007: "SEA SHELL TREASURE ....... Conus gloria maris; Volute thatcheri"
Wally Gibbins and Wally Muller were both keen shell collectors. Both men have been mentioned extensively within this blog. Use the search function.
With every shell there can be a good story, especially when expensive and rare specimens are concerned.
If a keen shell collector could have viewed this picture forty years ago – depending upon who it was, price was no object.
One John du Pont, from the family of USA industrialists was such a collector. He financed expeditions in search of the volute thatcheri (above, largest and closest to camera). Years later it was scuba divers who were to make the spectacular discoveries.
Why are some shells so rare? It’s where they live that matters.
The thatcheri is found only at a remote reef in The Coral Sea. Named by scientists in honour of the ‘discoverer’ – a Mr Thatcher who found a dead specimen shell on a beach where he had been shipwrecked or stranded 100 years ago.
(The last part of the story may not be entirely true….. whatever the reason, the reef was not a place you’d go to for a holiday, there is zero in the way of facilities).
Wally Muller organized an expedition of paying customers aboard his Coralita charter boat when the boat was newly launched.
That expedition it can now be revealed, recovered about 30 thatcheri shells. Their value then was about $2000 each in today’s adjusted prices.
The Gloria maris has an even more colorful history. Wally Gibbins discovered where these shells lived while salvage diving WWII shipwrecks in the Solomon Islands. Before then very few were in collections, it was truly the rarest cone shell in the world.
Deep water, black sand, a river mouth, risks from the presence of sharks and crocodiles made it a location you wouldn’t normally bother about. The shells, Wal discovered, liked to live near or under rotting timber logs washed downstream to the sea.
In today’s adjusted terms, $10,000 would have been paid for a single specimen forty years ago.
Today anything from a few hundred dollars upwards will secure a Gloria Maris or Glory of the Sea.
The thatcheri might well be in shorter supply and therefore of higher value. They come from an expensive part of the Pacific Ocean - which is also French Territory.
