Photo Showing Small Cut Found This Morning on a Treasure Coast Beach.First, I have a couple interesting news items from Kovels Komments today. First, a single copper Lincoln Penny was sold for nearly 2 million dollars.
Here is what Kovel's says.
"A 1943 zinc-coated steel Lincoln penny is worth less than 10 cents today. But a 1943 one-of-a-kind copper alloy Lincoln penny struck at the Denver Mint was recently sold by a New Jersey coin dealer for a record $1.7 million. The anonymous previous owner donated the coin to a charity before the sale so the charity would get the proceeds. The new owner also owns bronze 1943 pennies struck at the Philadelphia and San Francisco mints, and will show all three pennies at a coin show in Tampa in January. (Bronze is a copper alloy—but people always refer to the pennies as "copper.") It is thought that fewer than 20 of the bronze error pennies were made, and the coin that just sold is believed to be the only one minted in Denver. A few fakes have been discovered."
So it's possible to pick up a copper penny worth more than a gold coin. Instead of of getting tired of picking up pennies, check them out. And watch your pocket change.
I've recently mentioned how well silver is doing. It seems that the price of silver is causing additional interest in silver antiques that are now considered bargains and are being purchased by weight.
Here is that story from Kovel's.
"Antiques that were very collectible in the 1950s, like Dr. Wall Worcester cups and saucers, were bargains at a charity sale held last weekend. But sterling silver buyers, mostly antique dealers, were crowding the silver tables. Many had their own scales and weighed each tray, bowl or spoon to figure the meltdown value as well as the price they would pay. Since the items were weighed and priced a few days ago and silver has gone up, they may have found some bargains. We thought the silver jewelry was priced low and the gold high. It's strange for us to think about judging an antique tray by its weight. We haven't seen that since the Hunt brothers tried to corner the silver market in the late 1970s. Thousands of antique coin silver spoons and sterling trays were melted as the price of silver went higher than the price of the antiques. Silver went from $1.95 an ounce in 1973 to about $35 in September 1979 to a high of $54 in 1980. It fell to $21.62 over the next two months and millions of dollars were lost. The Hunts went bankrupt. This week silver is selling at about $21.47 an ounce; last September it was $16.68."
That's good news if you find or collect silver.
A Typical Treasure Coast Beach This Morning.Forecast and Conditions.
As you can see from the photo to the right, Nicole didn't do much. Most of the beach that I saw, looked about like this. Not as mushy as yesterday, but still not cut.
The photo at the top of the post shows a cut that I did find. It was about a foot high on average and ran about fifty yards. It was about a mile from the beach access and not near any houses or condos or much of anything. Yet I found a number of modern coins in front of the cut. I always wonder how coins get to be in places like this which see only a few walkers with no reason to have coins out.
The main point here today is that even though conditions are not good, if you are willing to work for it, you might be able to find a spot or two that produces a few things. I have to wonder how those coins got there.
One other point worth bringing out is that these coins were under about seven inches of nice brown course sand which was over top of a layer of black sand. The coins seemed to be laying the black sand.
With the coins in a buried layer of black sand, I found that the discrimination mode on my detector, with a minimum setting of discrimination, was more effective at detecting these coins than pin point mode. Under normal conditions it seems that my pin point mode is as effective as discrimination mode, but it seemed that the discrimination mode handled the buried black sand layer better.
Nicole passed is pretty much gone and the wind is now from the northwest.
If you check the surf web sites you'll see that they are predicting eight foot seas for Monday and Tuesday. That is pretty good and with any luck at all should improve conditions. I would say that after the peak seas would be the best time.
Well, at least I am encouraged today. It looks like something could finally happen next week.
In the mean time, if you are willing to work for it, you might be able to find a few interesting spots to hunt.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
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