Pirate Treasure

[mrcarkeys42]

I made most of the "Rich Stuff" gold for Goonies and when they they brought in the chest, which was a real 17th century iron "Armada" chest, I was concerned about the weight on set, and if the action called for the actors to pick up the chest. The chest, made of steel/iron, has a complex lock system in the lid and weighed about 60 lbs. and if I remember correctly was approximately 18" x 19" by 34". I pointed out, if filled with gold coins, It would weigh about 5,000 to 6000 lbs. and even with pewter coins it would weigh more than a ton. (Gold is nearly twice the density of pewter.) So we had to make a false bottom. These "Armada" chests, where more for documents than piles of gold and jewels.

The "old spanish gold bars", mrcarkeys42 speaks of are called necessity bars. In the "New world" they did not have coining mints, as this was not allowed, but if the government officials ran out of gold coins to pay their bills with, they could make these necessity bars. Which would have a date, a weight and some official seal/ stamp impression, sometime a partial coin die impression. You can see some of the shorter necessity bars in this shot.
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Now, the coins I made where twice to four times as thick as a real coin. This was done to make them read on camera as more substantial, and take up more room. We still made over 2500 coins. (If you have the Goonies" book, they show some of these coins and bars as a boarder around some photos from the film and one of the bars has my initials in it. "CSG")

For another project, an amusement park in Korea, I made "Coin tiles" for their treasure room. This was done by taking a pile of Goonies coins and making a 2 foot by 2 foot flat pile of coins on a board and poured silicon rubber on the pile. Then once cured, I flipped the silicone over, pulled the board off and "excavated" all of the coins using a sharp X-Acto knife. The resulting mold made what looked like a pile surface of coins. The mold was spray pained with Krylon Gold paint, then urethane plastic was slushed into the mold and once cured, but still flexible, the urethane was pulled from the mold. This meant the rubber mold and the urethane part could flex so the casts came out of the mold with little fuss or damage.
Here is the painted coin tile
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and here is the tile after being vacuum metalized in gold
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We use these as false bottoms in our treasure chests.

Cheers,

Wow that's really awesome! Goonies was one of the movies that inspired me to start this project, its really great to get a response from someone who actually worked on the film!

My gold coins actually just came in today, and i am both pleased and disappointed. I think their quality is good, and they will look just fine on camera (although i wish they were a bit more vibrant in color, they almost look more like white gold than gold gold, but a tiny bit of color correction in post will probably help) however, they barely take up any space in the chest and I bought roughly 350 of them. judging by eye I would need to buy at least 700 more on top of the 350 I already have. that would be more than 60 dollars (over 90 total) and im not sure if i am willing to spend that amount, so i think i am going to try a false bottom. my knowledge of molding is pretty limited, however i am currently in a sculpture class so i think i might try making a mold of the coins i currently have to make the false bottom. If that fails, i might try the painted rock idea that glitch451 suggested, or i was thinking of potentially getting $20 dollars worth of pennies from the bank (do they even do that? lol) and returning them when finished (i was planning on doing that anyway to make all the sound effects of the coins in the chest) however if i were to paint them gold i doubt they would be accepted back (unless i used a penny arcade, if i can find one) ill have to see how the mold attempt turns out first.

But anyway, thank you so much for responding, i do not have the goonies book but if i ever get my hands on it i will keep an eye out for your initials!

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Here's what I have left over. You can shoot me a couple bucks in PayPal for shipping if you want them.

Absolutely! thank you! i will respond to your PM about it

 

[mrcarkeys42]

just took some pictures/made comparisons of the gold coins. They seem to vary in color a bit, they are all a lighter gold color but some of them go really far to the point of looking silver, i am not sure if this was an intentional choice to have both gold and silver (which wasn't advertised) or just an inconsistent paint job.







after being somewhat disappointed with how the color, i decided to paint a few and compare. I am curious as to what you guys think



I think that comparing these, the rustoleum painted one definitely has the best color (do note that the difference between the two painted coins is much more drastic in person). Its also less shiny than the plastic coins as they were, which seems to be more realistic (old gold coins dont seem to be super shiny like that)



Also i will be filming on a beach during the daytime so it will be very bright, if the coins are too shiny it may not look very good on screen.

but at the same time i dont know if painting them all would be worth the effort, i guess i will have to do some tests outside tomorrow to see how they look. But what do you guys think?

 

[Jintosh]

The yellow plastic coin is actually the more accurate, but those painted gold coins would be easily identified as gold. They're not bad by themselves, but they do contrast with the yellow plastic coins. You would probably want one OR the other.

 

[reididtenroc]

Have you seen this ones on Aliexpress :https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/Euro...s-for-choose/2042225841.html?isOrigTitle=true

 

[mrcarkeys42]

I did a few more comparison shots as i wasn't sure if the one i posted did the different finishes justice (i feel like it made the yellow plastic coin more yellow, and the painted one more bronze then they both appear in person, though i suppose how they look in person is actually less important)

here is a pile of 15 of the coins as they were compared to a pile painted with rustoleum



I also aged one of the rustoleum coins with acrylic paint and compared it with the unaged rustoleum coin and the more gold original coin







I think i have decided that i will definitly paint the coins with the rustoleum, even if its less accurate to real life i feel like its how i imagine the color of gold in my head and i think i prefer them less shiny. Also, i will end up painting everything else (that needs to be painted) with the rustoleum including the false bottom, so it would be weird if there were two different looks to the gold mixed together.

That being said i am not sure if i will age them like i did the one. I really like the way it looks in closeup, i think it looks a lot like real antique gold ive seen online, but from afar it might make the coins too dull. I will decide tomorrow when i do more lighting tests outside

 

[mrcarkeys42]

Have you seen this ones on Aliexpress :https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/Euro...s-for-choose/2042225841.html?isOrigTitle=true

I haven't, but they look like they are the same design as the metal ones on amazon posted earlier (though perhaps higher detail) unfortunately i couldn't spend that much, but even if i could 1000 wouldn't be enough. It would take more than a thousand of the larger coins i got to fill the entire chest, those ones are only half the size.