Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
Crudely Made Silver Ring Find.This ring has been through the ringer - if you are old enough to know what that means. It has taken a beating.
It looks like it has been under the rocks in front of the beach and got churned and crunched.
I've seen nickles and quarters that were so bent that they were nearly folded in half.
That would seem to take a lot of force, and I don't know but I think it happens to coins caught in those rocks.
This ring got banged up but not squashed like some that I've seen.
I cleaned it up enough to see if I could find any identifying marks, but I couldn't.
It is made of two strips of high grade silver. The thin strip arund the middle was applied over the wide strip. I acid tested it.
It was black, but, like I said, I cleaned it up a bit.
All of the decorative marks appear to have been made by simply punching the strips one line or dot at a time.
As you can see in this photo, a couple pieces broke off where it was punched. The silver is really beat up and has a lot of marks. Some I think are from the tooling process, but I think many are from the beating it took, possibly while in the rocks.
Too bad I can't tell any more than that about it. I'll clean it up a little more.
I guess another front went through yesterday after I wrote that post. The wind increased and so did the waves for a little while.
Now the wind is coming more from the south, and the seas are down around two feet again.
The surf web sites are predicting calm seas for a few days.
I think there are still some spots where it would be worth checking the beach fronts.
Yesterday I found a sparse coin line. It took me a while to find it, but I finally did. The coins in that line were six inches to a foot deep for the most part, and the line wasn't too far back from the water's edge.
It is easier to miss a coin line when there are relatively few object in the line, and when they are spread farther apart.
When you find one coin on a beach, test to see if there is a coin line or a coin hole. I've described search patterns for that in the past.
One pattern I like to use after finding a coin below a cut or in the a wet sand area, is to use the hole as the center and start a spiral pattern working out from the hole as far as you think necessary for current conditions.
If you find a second coin about the same distance from the waters edge, you might have found a coin line. Check parallel to the water's edge in both directions to see if there is a line of coins.
If the second coin you find is either farther or nearer the water than the first, you might have either a good thick line or a coin hole.
I've also described before how different objects tend to be organized in coin lines and coin holes. Different types of coins will tend to be found together in one part of the line or hole, and gold rings will generally be found in rather predictable locations relative to coin lines and holes. Just where depends upon additional factors.
Happy hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net
