Titanic Treasures Up for Grabs—But the Government Says Not So Fast

By Annie Davidson Watson | June 25, 2026

RMS Titanic Inc., the company that holds exclusive salvage rights to the Titanic, has announced plans to auction more than 100 artifacts from the famous shipwreck. However, the fate of those items—which include a (real) heart-shape pendant and other jewelry—may ultimately be decided not by collectors but by a federal judge.

The Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is pushing back hard against RMS Titanic’s plans, arguing in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Norfolk, Va., that the sale would violate the company’s legal obligations to conserve the roughly 5,000-item collection as a whole for the public interest. Previous agreements allowed RMS Titanic solely to display them in museums and traveling exhibitions.

Among the jewels poised for the block are a necklace of gold nuggets, a sapphire and diamond ring, and a bracelet engraved with the name Amy (found in the initial 1987 salvage), as well as the heart pendant. They’re all intimate objects that recall the lives cut short on that April night in 1912.

Their proposed auction comes amid a red-hot market for Titanic-related jewelry and timepieces. Last November, Isidor Straus’ 18k gold pocket watch—a 43rd birthday gift from Straus’ wife, Ida, who died with him in the disaster—sold for £1.78 million ($2.35 million), the most ever paid for a piece of Titanic memorabilia.

The Jules Jürgensen watch broke a record set the previous year, when a Tiffany pocket watch that had been presented to Arthur Rostron, captain of the rescue ship RMS Carpathia, by the widows of three Titanic casualties, fetched £1.56 million (just under $2 million). Both auctions were conducted by Henry Aldridge & Son.

RMS Titanic Inc. has said it would hold a pre-auction touring exhibition of the artifacts in four undisclosed cities. Responding to the NOAA lawsuit, the company countered that U.S. courts lack jurisdiction over items originally claimed in another country, setting up a jurisdictional standoff over these remarkable jewels and other objects.

Top: The gold pocket watch recovered from Titanic victim Isidor Straus’ body (photos courtesy of Henry Aldridge & Son)

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