Odyssey Gold

Odyssey’s Journey to NASDAQ 

The news release printed below is “Hot Off the Press”

In a rather interesting way it’s a return to the, once, familier. OMR, soon to be OMEX, initially traded on the bulletin boards (unlisted stocks, unaffiliated with an exchange) as OMEX. At that point success was in the offing and today’s share prices a dream.

Odyssey Marine Exploration Announces Move To The NASDAQ Stock Market

TAMPA, FL – June 28, 2007 – Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. (currently AMEX:OMR), the world leader in the field of deep-ocean shipwreck exploration, announced today that its application for listing its common stock on The NASDAQ Stock Market LLC® has been approved, and the transfer of trading from the American Stock Exchange to NASDAQ will become effective on or about July 10, 2007. Odyssey Marine Exploration will trade under the symbol NASDAQ:OMEX. “This decision was reached after careful consideration of capital market alternatives and analysis of the electronic market model, which provides added visibility to our investors,” said John C. Morris, Odyssey Marine Exploration CEO and co-founder. “We believe that NASDAQ’s electronic multiple market maker structure will provide Odyssey with enhanced exposure and liquidity, while at the same time providing investors with the best prices, the fastest execution, and the lowest cost per trade. We feel the move to NASDAQ is an important step towards future growth of the Company.” About NASDAQ®
NASDAQ® is the largest U.S. electronic stock market. With approximately 3,200 companies, it lists more companies and, on average, its systems trade more shares per day than any other U.S. market. NASDAQ is home to companies that are leaders across all areas of business including technology, retail, communications, financial services, transportation, media and biotechnology. NASDAQ is the primary market for trading NASDAQ-listed stocks. For more information about NASDAQ, visit the NASDAQ Web site at http://www.nasdaq.com or the NASDAQ NewsroomSM http://www.nasdaq.com/newsroom. About Odyssey Marine Exploration
Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. is engaged in the exploration of deep-water shipwrecks and uses innovative methods and state-of-the-art technology to conduct extensive deep-ocean search and recovery operations around the world. The Company recovered more than 51,000 silver and gold coins from the shipwreck of the SS Republic at a depth of approximately 1700 feet. On May 18, 2007, Odyssey announced the discovery and recovery of more than 500,000 coins from a Colonial era site in the Atlantic Ocean code-named “Black Swan“. Odyssey has several other shipwreck projects in various stages of development around the world and recently opened a shipwreck exhibit at Tampa’s Museum of Science and Industry called SHIPWRECK! Pirates & Treasure. Additional information about Odyssey, the SS Republic shipwreck, the “Black Swan” project and the company’s other activities is available at www.shipwreck.net .

News about Odyssey Marine and their recovery of an estimated $500,000,000 worth of gold and silver coins from a sunken treasure ship went wild. Over the period of May 18, 2007 thru May 31, 2007 I received over 119 Google News Alert notices. Each notice contained links to at least one story and sometimes up to six links per alert. May 18 brought 12 alerts consisting of 38 story links. The first link was to a AP story in the Biloxi (MS) Sun Herald. The articles were fairly factual and mostly based on the initial AP story. That started changing on the second day. And how!

Day two of the saga brought 16 alerts containing 30 story links. While most were factual towards the end of the day the wackiness began. Spain started lusting, publicly, after the gold. A column in “The London Times” announced that the sunken treasure was found off the coast of Tampa. And, of course, no sudden wealth story is complete without at least one long lost relative coming forth to stake claim to, at least, some portion of the loot. In this case it is a man claiming to be a direct descendent  of the Captain of  HMS Merchant Royal. The Merchant Royal sank in the Atlantic off the south east coast of England in 1641. Many are speculating it is the vessel from which OMR recovered the treasure. So – only 18 plus generations later a fellow wants a share of his great-great-great-great-etc. grandaddy’s personal fortune which was thought to be aboard the ship.

From there it continued with Spain continuing to scream and kick like a spoiled child. A few academicians bemoaned the rape of a pristine cultural asset by a for profit organization. These are, in many cases, the same academicians who, on bended knee with head hung low, serially submit grant requests, for their favorite airy-fairy projects, to philanthropies funded, by of all things, corporate profits.

Possibly the highlight of all the stories, articles and posts relating to the gold was a parody story posted on thespoof.com.

Also of importance during this time OMR stock prices hit new highs several times.

 May 31, brought 16 Google News Alerts consisting of 30 seperate story links. This for the most part was due to The Kingdom of Spain deciding to effectivly blockade Odyssey’s research and recovery vessels in the port at Gibralter.

Just a quick note in closing: The Google News Alerts I subscribe to are in English only. The only non-English language I have any experience with is Spanish. Now while the ability to fluently read Spanish would have been very helpful in researching this post my year and a half of Spanish classes in high school 40 years ago failed me. As of today (6/26/07) Google is showing 128,000 pages in all languages versus 83,000 pages in English and about 20,000 pages in Spanish. Based on a significant number of posts and stories some of the Spanish press treated the story with less than complete regard for the truth.

The year 2006 brought sporadic news about Odyssey Marine and the firms continual search for lost treasure. There were government mandated financial reports and a few operational updates.

CEO John Morris  returned after an extended medical leave.

 A new, heavy weather capable, ship was purchased.

OMR stock prices were less than exciting; trading throughout 2006 was in a fairly narrow range between two and four dollars per share. The high for the year was $4.18 on March 13th with the low for the year, followed three months later, on June 19 at $1.52 per share.

Odyssey is in some ways a “story stock”. A story stock, according to investorwords.com, is, “A stock whose price is currently moving, or expected to move, due to some important company news”, hence, no exciting news and no, or not much, movement. The last major news was the recovery of silver and gold coins from the wreck of the SS Republic in 2005. At various times through the year a bit of hopeful news regarding the HMS Sussex project would surface resulting in increased interest.

 The new year, 2007, arrived and it appeared not much had changed – until March 26th.

That’s the day Odyssey issued a press release stating that agreement had been reached between the Spanish government, the Junta of Andalucia, the UK and Odyssey concerning survey and identification methodology to be employed on the shipwreck believed to be the HMS Sussex. The full press release is available on Odyssey’s website.

After that the stock price wandered around in the “fours” until May 18, 2007 and then…

 Stay tuned for the next exciting installment…

 Elmer Hurlstone

ehurlstone@odysseygold.com
 

Odyssey Marine’s best friend does not appear to be Spain, if information just in is correct.

“Spain targets US treasure ships”

That’s the headline on a BBC story dated June 5, 2007 at 21:00 GMT (5:00 PM EDT). The article goes on to say, “a judge in Cadiz instructed police to capture the ships if they entered Spanish waters“, citing unnamed Spanish media . There were no other new details written. The balance of the story was a recap of the discovery, recovery and removal of an estimated US$500,000,000.00 in coin from a colonial era sunken ship, said by Odyssey officials, to be located in the Atlantic off the SW coast of the UK.

The complete BBC story may be found at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6725059.stm

Elmer Hurlstone 6/5/07 8:44 PM EDT

The complete press release from which the above was excerpted may be viewed at: http://shipwreckandtreasure.com/Portals/2/release.pdf

Newschannel 8 anchor Bob Hite intro’d an interesting and detailed story about Odyssey, MOSI, the exhibit, pirates and lost treasure. I wasn’t able to obtain a direct link to the video clip. WFLA-TV reporter Jeff Patterson goes through file video of Odyssey search and exploration techniques while providing background on the company. Video is also shown of the new displays for the exhibit. OMR Exec. Vice President Mark Gordon is intervied by Patterson. Since I don’t have a direct link to the video clip you can find it by going to www.WFLA.com, it is titled, “New MOSI Display” under the “MORE: Local News Tab. It runs 3:12 and is well done. It does contain a little footage of the possibly $500,000,000.00 recent Atlantic find.