Walking Liberty Half.Even 20th Century coins are affected by the salt water. Here is a greenie. Sorry for the poor photo.
I just received news that a two-pound gold bar was just found on the trail of Atocha. Unfortunately it has no markings to speak of. Must have been smuggled.
I expect to get a photo of that before long.
Yesterday I mentioned that I would be giving some details on some of the secondary treasure beaches. Today I'll talk about Pepper Park and the Wedge Wreck, or the Urca de Lima. You probably all know that the Wedge Wreck is named that because of the large silver wedges that were found. Relatively few coins have been associated with that wreck. You might also know that this wreck is in a protected State Preserve.
Anyhow, it seems that most people that go there to detect, park at Pepper Park and detect the beach directly in front of the park. That is OK of course, but there are cannons and an anchor that is located further north in front of the condo. You might be able to see marker buoys if you stand in front of the condo and look out to the east.
To give GPS coordinates, four cannon and an anchor are located at around N 27 30.312.
So if you've always been detecting down at the park, you might want to try a little further to the north sometime.
I mentioned a find that I made yesterday, and after I thought about it I realized that it very well illustrated the things that I have been talking about lately. I've been talking about sampling sites before deciding where to spend your time, and how often good finds are made around the border areas of the most densely populated beach spots.
Yesterday I decided to hunt a tourist beach because the nearest treasure beaches were looking pretty poor. I went to a place that is often heavily used by beach goers and sampled the area directly in front of a hotel and between two beach walk-overs where a lot of people go. After running a very loose scan pattern for a short while, it looked like there wasn't much to be found there. The area directly in front of the hotel and between the walk-overs were very clean. I therefore moved a little to the north of that area and found a few coins right off the bat. I therefore felt that I was now outside the area that had been cleaned out. The next thing I found as a very nice item. It was outside the area where most of the beach goers settle and outside the area that had been heavily hunted.
That is often how it works. On the Treasure Coast there are so many detectorist, and many of them hit the same areas over and over again. Sometimes it is worth following other detectorists,(You can check to see if that might be worthwhile.) but sometimes it is better to simply move to the border areas where, as I recently explained, many of the better items are lost. That certainly worked for me yesterday.Don't forget: one good find is often worth more than a bag full of coins and junk.
I am not usually very much interested in the modern coins except for what they tell me about the area and what how it has been detected.
Again, I've not yet talked about my sampling criteria. I'll do that someday.
If you still have some US silver coins around, you might want to check the melt value of those coins. A walking liberty half like the one shown in the photo above would be worth close to $15 today in melt value.
Here is the link for the calculator.
http://www.coinflation.com/coins/silver_coin_calculator.html
Treasure Coast Beach Forecast and Conditions
The seas are running about two feet today with the wind coming from the southeast. I heard on the radio that the wind is to reach up to 20 knots today. I found that hard to believe, but who knows. Right now there isn't any wind to speak of.
By Sunday (Easter, and a good day for a hunt.) the prediction is for five foot seas.
There is a nice full moon approaching too.
Detecting conditions remain poor on the Treasure Coast Beaches when it comes to hunting shipwreck cobs.
As I've been mentioning, there are other things to do if you make the proper adjustments.
There is always somewhere to hunt and something to be found.
Don't forget to enter your vote in the survey.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net