on july 11 1783 the ship nicobar was lost to the sea taking all but 11 people on board with her when the ship was discovered in 1987 off the coast of coin point in south africa divers found 3 000 examples of swedish plate money or brickstailer plates it took four months to salvage the shipwreck in what was the biggest find of copper plate money in history sweden became a european power due to the conquests of gustavus adolphus king from 1611 to 1632. the new empire required gold and silver coinage to maintain power through its armies but sweden had no significant sources of either metal it was however rich in copper an important strategic metal used in warfare the mine and fallon produced two-thirds of the copper used in europe most of which was sold in exchange for silver king gustavus produced small copper coins for his people beginning in 1624. it was hoped that the decreased supply of copper available for export would force the price of copper to rise unfortunately the value of these coins was too small for larger transactions in 1644 queen christina attempted to solve this problem by issuing a copper coinage denominated in dailers with the bouillon value of current swedish silver daler coins the result was a series of copper plates ranging from just over a pound to more than 50 pounds the largest coins ever minted at that time denominations ranged from a half dailer about three and a half inches square to 10 dailers 13 by 27 inches the metal was hammered into sheets of necessary thickness cut to size with shears then stamped four corner stamps bear the name or initials of the current monarch and the year of issue the center stamp bears the denomination and the reverse is blank some plates have an additional stamp due to redenomination all this work was done by hand using large tools giving each plate a unique character [Music] these pieces were cheap to produce and simplify the export of copper but obviously they were difficult to use in everyday commerce and became unpopular among the common people imagine having to use a horse to carry the copper necessary to buy another horse illustrations show citizens with sacks of copper plates over their back or pulling a load of plates on a sled an account of a bank robbery in stockholm relates how the thieves took all of the money except for the plate coins they were too heavy and not worth the effort swedish plate money was produced through 1776 the 10 and 8 dayler denominations were discontinued due to their inconvenient size and weight eventually the entire idea backfired on sweden mining and deposits increased and the value of the metal depreciated virtually all of the pieces were melted down over the years and today most of the roughly eleven thousand pieces of plate money in existence comes from shipwrecks in particular the nicobar interestingly the production of plate money was a catalyst for the creation of the first banknotes in europe and a major development for sweden's modern banking system in 1656 a private bank called stockholm's banco was licensed the bank received copper as bullion and issued transport notes in return this was so successful that the government revoked stockholm's bunko's charter and in 1668 established the royal bank of sweden now called the rex bank the country's central bank the money museum has several dealer specimens on display where details of the coins production can be seen up close although these large coins are no longer used in sweden their modern day currency based on the krona is still sometimes referred to as ricksdaler