The distant waters of Southeast Asia have turned out to be a treasure trove of fine Oriental ceramics. Tons of high-quality Asian pieces recovered from shipwreck sites have been injected into the antiques market over the past 30 years.

It all started in 1984 with the grand sale of the Hatcher Cargo. In that year, Christie’s Amsterdam took the bold step at auctioning the contents of a 17th-century shipwreck that had just been discovered by Captain Michael Hatcher in the South China Sea. The Hatcher Cargo sold quietly, but two years later when Christie’s Amsterdam auctioned the contents of another wreck discovered by Hatcher (that of the Dutch-flagged Gerdelmalsen, circa 1746) the auction house raised a staggering $16 million. Christie’s had started a trend, and a phenomenon known as “cargo collecting” came into being.

Most Southeast Asian shipwrecks were haphazardly discovered by fishermen, and there have been reports of sites of immense archaeological importance being clumsily rifled of their contents by ruthless treasure hunters and sold underground. Luckily, in certain cases, cooperation between private marine explorers and government organizations saved the day. The states that asserted jurisdictional rights over the finds took a share of the spoils, while the maritime explorers who discovered and salvaged the wrecks were allowed to sell their share of the bounty on the international market. A delicate balance between state jurisdictional rights and private interests was struck because the rule of thumb—“finders keepers”—finds little application in the world of underwater cultural heritage due to the 2001 International Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage and the fact that national laws tend to effectively outlaw treasure hunting. Arrangements such as those entered into between the governments of Vietnam and Malaysia with private salvage companies resulted in an unprecedented influx of legitimate, high-quality material.

There has recently been a great deal of enthusiasm around Southeast Asian shipwrecks, and some finds have received advance media publicity. Christie’s was the pioneer but rival auction houses soon followed suit. Butterfields joined the fray in 2000 with the sale of the historically important contents of the 15th-century Hoi An Hoard. Almost $14 million had been invested in the high-tech recovery operations but the artifacts yielded only a miserly $2.9 million at auction. The latest Asian shipwreck auction of the Ca Mau (c. 1725) was that held by Sotheby’s on behalf of the Vietnamese government in January 2007.

Malaysia is particularly rich in shipwreck sites, and no less than eight have been unveiled in its waters over the past seven years. Items recovered from such wrecks are presently being sold over the Internet. Some explorers seem to prefer direct sales because the prices are believed to be higher than those realized at auction where several items tend to be bundled together in a single lot.