(MONEY Magazine) – The late Tennessee Williams would have loved the bash for 1,000 in his adopted hometown of Key West. Everywhere one looked there was silver, gold, emeralds and other treasure from the Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de Atocha, sunk by a hurricane in the Florida Keys in 1622. At the center of it all last Sept. 20 was host Mel Fisher, the flamboyant Floridian who, in 1985, brought up what he and others estimated at the time was $400 million worth of booty from the sunken ship (Money, September 1985). The guests were Fisher's co-investors in the venture, each of whom had put up from $1,000 to $3.2 million in 1985 to find and raise the treasure. Now their moment of truth was near. Fisher's Treasure Salvors Inc. had invited them to ogle the hoard, to preview Dreams of Gold, a made-for-televisio n movie about Fisher that will air on CBS this winter (Cliff Robertson plays Fisher), and most of all to celebrate the impending distribution of the booty. But some may feel slightly sandbagged, for they probably will collect only 15% of what Fisher boasted a year ago. According to the rules of the partnership, investors will be paid off in loot, not dollars. Each piece of treasure has been independently appraised by such firms as Christie's and Sotheby's and allotted points based on assessed value. When the treasures are divvied up later this year, each investor will ; receive loot, randomly selected by computer, with a point value proportional to his original partnership share. Thus a limited partner who originally invested $1,000, which entitles him to a hundredth of 1% of the treasure, will have no way of knowing whether he ultimately will receive several small items or one large valuable one. Fisher's Treasure Salvors Inc. controls 30% and will submit its own share to the same random distribution process. The treasure's market value may be far less than anyone assumed. Indeed, at previous auctions of shipwreck treasures, prices have plummeted quickly as once rare articles have flooded the market. Says Burt Webber, a Rehrersburg, Pa. treasure hunter with a $13 million find to his credit: ''I think realistically that the treasure will be worth around $60 million or $70 million.'' If that estimate is true, a $1,000 investor would get treasure that he presumably could sell for $6,000 to $7,000 -- a far cry from the $40,000 or so he might have made if Fisher's original $400 million estimate had held up.