Durham Treasure Coins
1944 Saudi Arabia 1 Riyal AH1354 (1935)

Owner Comments:

The SS John Barry was an American Liberty ship in WWII. It was torpedoed and sunk by German submarine U-859 on August 24, 1944. It was carrying a cargo of 3 million American-minted Saudi one-riyal silver coins as an American payment associated with ARAMCO. The reason for this shipment was that Saudi Arabia did not use paper money at the time and this led to a war-time shortage of currency with which to pay workers building new oil refineries and other US facilities at newly founded Dhahran.

The ship had sunk to 8,500 feet below the sea surface, far beyond the reaches of most undersea recovery methods. The salvage was undertaken by Blue Water Recoveries LTD between October 21st and and November 18th 1994, from the dynamically positioned deep sea salvage vessel Flex LD owned by TRAVOCEAN using an underwater grab designed and operated by IFREMER. The ship was carrying a cargo of 26 million dollars in 1800 tons of silver bullion and 3 million of silver coins.

Most of the coins recovered from the wreck were heavily damaged and corroded from seawater exposure. Only a very limited quantity with this high of a quality in uncirculated condition was hand selected to be authenticated by NGC.