5/30/12 Report - Beach Conditions and More on Olive Jars

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

I got out to the beach yesterday to see what it looked like.  Here is one beach as it looked yesterday morning near low tide.  Pretty typical.  Very sandy poor conditions.  This is the same beach that had three foot cuts a few days ago.  The sand is always moving.  Usually you can tell what you are going to see before you get there, but occasionally there are surprises.  Local storms can kick up enough waves for a short period of time to create small cuts but they will be small and won't be productive unless they are on top of a beach that had recently been producing, and the cuts won't last long.  

A few inches is all it takes sometimes to freshen up a beach that was recently productive.  On the other hand it really takes a lot to make sandy unproductive beaches productive again.

I got a few emails on the topic of olive jars.  I showed an olive jar rim with what appears to be a nice clear owner's mark in my 5/11/12 post.  If you missed that post and can identify the mark or want to do some research, it sure would be nice to find out who it belonged to.

The Florida Museum of Natural History has a variety of olive jar shards in their database.

Here is the link to that.

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/histarch/gallery_types/all_of_type_proc.asp?type_name=OLIVE

The Mel Fisher artifact database shows two intact examples as well as some shards.

And here is an olive jar that is now for sale on eBay.  I think it was found in New Mexico, if I correctly recall.  The asking price is around $1700. 

It is not likely you will ever find an unbroken one on the beach. 

I have read of intact olive jars coming up in fishing nets. Two were discovered by fisherman off of St. Augustine like that. 

Shards are much more usual.  Occasionally the sand will cover and protect a jar, keeping it intact.



Olive Jar For Sale on EBay.

 The one in the photo has a three legged stand.  I don't know if that is original or not.  Could be. 

According to what I've read, it seems that some were carried in rough cloth carriers with handles.  Like I've said before, it is not unusual to find shards on the beach when conditions are right.

I think I've also told about receiving maps from an anonymous dowser who marked some spots on the Treasure Coast for investigation.   One X he put on the map was thought to indicate the location of a couple of olive jars full of treasure.

I have a lot of material today, but will have to keep a lot of it for tomorrow or some other day.

After visiting the beach briefly yesterday I decided to go inland to hunt a little while and found a decent amount of modern coins.

Many of the most hard core detectorists fall into a regular routine. They have their favorite spots and hunt them over and over again. Some even hunt the same days of the week and the same time of day.  If you've fallen into a habit like that, try changing things up a bit.  Try  some new places.  As surprising as it might seem, there are still places out there where people seldom hunt and where you can always find a good number of targets.

I found out why Odyssey marine stock had been doing well.  There was a Yahoo Finance article recommending them.  I'll have more on some of their projects tomorrow. 

And did you hear about the doctor that hid an engagement ring on the beach where he planned a surprise proposal.  Let me see....  what could go wrong with that plan?

More on that tomorrow too.  I'm running late.


Treasure Coast Beach Detecting Forecast.

The seas are down around one or two feet.  The seas will remain calm through the weekend according to the predictions.  The wind will be mostly from the west or south. 

Even though conditions for finding old shipwreck coins on the beach remain poor, there are still some modern finds and a few artifacts to be found.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net