Not Just Toys.To me these aren't just toys. They are some of the toys that I played with a few decades ago back where I grew up in Pennsylvania.
I once had the opportunity to return to where I was raised and detect the yard where I and my friends played. I dug up these old friends.
If you ever have a chance to detect the places you played as a child, I'd highly recommend doing it. Memories will come popping out of the ground. To me that is really special, and closer to what detecting is really all about than anything else I can imagine.
I showed these once before but decided to show them again because of something I'll mention below.
This is the last day for the Sedwick Coins Internet-Only Auction. Last chance to register and bid.
The newly formed St. Lucie Treasure Hunting Club will have a club hunt on 7/31/11. I gave contact information for the club in yesterday's post if you are interested. Contact Bernie C.
Some people talk about the time they dug a dime at three feet. Different things can happen that will make it appear that way.
When you take a scoop of sand in the water, if you lift the scoop quickly or if there are heavy currents in the water, items can fall out when you lift the scoop. If this happens repeatedly, the target can continue to fall back into the hole as the hole gets deeper. By the time you get it, it is three feet deep.
Sometimes a target will seem to disappear. That can happen when the target falls into the bottom of a deep hole as I just described.
Targets will also seem to disappear sometimes when you are digging on the beach. The most common cause of that is when a coin or something was first detected when it was laying flat and then is moved so that it is standing on end. When a signal disappears like that, check the sides of the hole to see if the coin is stuck to the side of the hole, and check the bottom of the hole to see if the coin has fallen deeper into the hole and beyond detecting range.
Take a dime or whatever and put it flat in the bottom of a hole and run your detecctor over it. If it isn't too deep you'll get a good strong signal. Then stand the coin on edge at a similar depth. Run your coil over it. You'll see that it gives a much more faint signal when stading on edge.
Some people detect the front face of cuts. Many of the coins they ind that way have fallen down the face of the cut and are then laying parallel to the face of the cut. Coins that are still buried will generally be laying flat and only present an edge to a coil that is sweeping parallel to the face of the cut, therefore only giving a faint signal, if any at all.
Another thing that will result in a disappearing signal, is when a small ring or other small item breaks. You will get a much stonger signal from a unbroken ring laying flat, for example, than you will from a ring standing on edge or a broken ring. If your scoop hits the ring and breaks it, the signal could disappear.
You can easily test that if you have a small broken gold ring. I often recommend testing various test obect under different conditions. That is a very good way to become more familiar with your detector and the signals it produces.
Another common cause of disappearing targets, occurs when digging in moving water, especially on a slope, such as the front of a cut beach where the waves are still hitting. The waves can quickly move items, sometimes surprising distances, especially if the object is light or thin.
It can be instructive to follow targets that are being moved by the water just to see how the waves are moving things. Sometimes I'll throw an object into the waves and follow it with my detector just to observe that.
If you've been detecting very long, you've probably found some old metal toy soldiers or metal diecast cars. Not all toys are worthless. Some are very collectable.
Kovels Komments says that Barclay Manufacturing Co. began making 3 1/2-inch lead soldiers in about 1935 and was the largest U.S. manufacturer of toy soldiers in the 1930s and 1940s. Most of the toy soldiers were sold in dime stores. Barclay did not make any toys between April 1942 and the end of World War II. It stopped production in 1971. The trademark was sold in the 1990s and reproductions are being made. Other companies have made toy soldiers similar to Barclay's ... Prices vary according to the maker, number of pieces in the set, types of pieces, and condition. A group of 40 lead soldiers sold for $70 last year. Individual soldiers can sell for about $10. Recent prices include $10 for a flag bearer and $9.95 for a shell loader.
I like finding vintage toys even if they aren't worth much. Detecting isn't all about money. In fact very little of it is. Many people don't understand that.
Treasure Coast Beach Forecast and Conditions.
Premiminary results from the survey show that a lot of people are not hitting the beaches now. I'm not surprised. I always knew that the middle of summer was not the peak time for detecting on the Treasure Coast.
For one thing beach detecting conditions are usually poor during the summer until a good storm comes along. The weather is hot and a lot of people are out of town on vaction. The snow birds that like to detect aren't here either.
Detecting on the Treaure Coast usually picks up in the Fall.
I'll have the final results of the survey in a few days.
The wind is out of the southeast. That usually means more sand and shells piling up on the beach. Seas will be around two feet again, and continuing for a few days.
The tropical wave I've been talking about is now Tropical Storm Don and is located down by the Yucatan, heading into the Gulf. Won't do much of anything for us.
Conditions remain unchanged.
Happy Hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net