I have not yet let fall this subject into the emptiness of oblivion, myself. Too much of Portuguese involvement in that, by reading a few pages of (dark) history, one can not remain imperturbable ...
Picking mark's wondering in post #25:
"Getting back to the Whydah, which was taken by Bellamy off of West Africa, the bronze 'anklets' were to be used for trade, but never made it to the 'Coite Ivor', instead lingering in the hold until a hurricane took the ship off Wellfleet."
Food for thought. According to Alex Johnson (Published: May 25, 2018) the Whydah set her sails and left London in 1716, hunging left past Portugal and pointing her bow toward Africa, starting her pray of locals and buying imprisoned slaves all the way down to Ajudá (Ouidah). After having completed his sordid business, her captain Lawrence Prince took the Middle Passage to the Caribbean with his human cargo.
So we may take it as logic that the manilhas did make it to their destination, with which Prince made his acquisitions. What we may infer is that, given that the number of manilhas maintained aboard was so large, the ones found in the wreck were stock left overs.
Numbers of these things at stake, as recorded, were so huge that this would be no surprise. Enough to say that are records of a contract between the Portuguese government and Erasmus Schetz of Antwerp, who supplied the Portuguese factory at Mina (Ghana) with as many as 150,000 manilhas per year. Alright, this was happening one or two centuries before, but still,
Going back to Mark in his post #11:
I decided to purchase a couple of old bronze manilla as a tip of the hat to the African slaves who gained their freedom through piracy!
Have you finally acquired them, Captain ?
Well, i did; first an example with reduced dimensions (later period ?) and another one already bought and coming in after Christmas.
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