Wednesday, March 14, 2012
3/14/12 Report - OMD marks, LiDAR, Fake Struck Coins
Written by the Treasureguide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
OMD Eight-Reale.
I was talking yesterday about OMD marks like those sometimes seen on reales from the Mexican mint. Here are two examples.
The one to the right is an 1620 eight reale.
The one below is a 1620 four reale.
The D on both of these would indicate the assayer Diego de Godoy. And of course both are from the Mexico mint.
The O is typically a little smaller than the M, as is the case on these two cobs and was the case for the mystery object bearing an OMD mark that I showed a couple of days ago.
OMD Four-Reale.
Here is a nice web site that talks about how forgeries of struck coins are made. Very interesting.
http://www.calgarycoin.com/reference/fakes/struck.htm
Learning about how fake coins are made will help you identify fakes, but it will also teach you a little about genuine coins.
A gold coin worth $45,000 was found by archaeologists in San Antonio on a construction project.
http://www.coinnews.net/2008/02/01/archaeologists-find-old-gold-coin-worth-45000-in-latrine-at-construction-site-3899/
LiDAR is a technology that helps identify archaeological sites and where structures existed in the past.
Here is an article about that.
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/03/indiana-jones-goes-geek-laser-mapping-lidar-revolutionizes-archaeology.ars?clicked=related_right
The beaches are sandy and the seas relatively calm with lazy waves hitting the beach almost directly from the east.
Here is a photo of Frederick Douglas Beach this morning.
I saw a whale breaching in the distance. Too far away to catch on my Flip Cam though.
It looks like we'll be stuck with about four foot swells for at least a week. It looks like conditions won't be improving.
There were a number of targets near the water line near low tide though. Nothing great, but if you keep at it you might come up with a spike or something like that.
Happy hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net