7/6/12 Report - Testing Gold and Diamonds & Thought Control

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

Electronic Gold Test Equipment (riogrande.com).

If you've been detecting a while, you've probably found some things that you aren't sure about.  Maybe you're not sure what the item is made of.  Maybe you haven't been able to find the owner or the item is broken and not usable anymore.  If silver, maybe it is corroded beyond recognition.  In cases like that, you might choose to recycle the materials.  Scrap gold or silver can be melted and recast, but first you'll want to know for sure what you have.

I've mentioned acid testing before and discussed how to do that.    You can search past posts by using the blog search box to read about that, but there are other ways to test gold.  There are electronic methods.  Good electronic test devices are more expensive than acid test kits but can be bought for as little as $200.  The less expensive electronic test kits require use of a chemical that must be changed after every use.  More expensive electronic test equipment, up around $400, do not require any test chemicals.  Unless you are finding a lot of items that need to be tested, an inexpensive acid test kit will probably be good enough for testing gold, silver and platinum.

You can easily get your items tested for free these days.  Simply take the item to a pawn shop or jewelry consignment store or a place that purchases gold and you can probably get them to test your item.



Electronic Diamond Tester  (riogrande.com)



There are also electronic diamond testers.  Good ones start at around $100 and up.

A lot of the places that buy gold will simply pay for the gold but not give you anything for the stones.  I'd take any good stones out and keep them.

Here is one of those articles that gets me going.   A physician was tried for removing and attempting to sell antiquities from Italy even though the article says he was tried not because the coins were antiquities (they weren't) but because he "believed" the coins were antiquities.  Does that make sense to anyone else?


Here is the link if you want to read that article.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2018592771_apusitalylootedcoincase.html

One of several things in that article that gets me going is the issue of attempts by any legal system to determine what is in a person's head, and worse yet, to pass judgment on that.   How do you know a person's mind?  And even if you could know for certain what is in another person's mind, should thought be legislated?

You can say, yes, it is done all the time.  There are "hate" crimes, for example, which I would say might be better described as "thought" crimes.   And there are attempts to judge a person's mind in other ways, for example to determine intent or insanity.

To me, the most basic freedom is freedom of thought.  Not far behind that is freedom of speech.

Not only do I believe freedom of thought should be protected because it is the most basic of freedoms, but it is also near impossible to "know a man's thoughts."   I suppose the next thing is to judge a man's subconscious mind - things he doesn't even know he thinks.   Where does it end?

Thoughts may be fleeting occurrences, the result of mistaken observations, mistaken conclusions, creative artistic or scientific explorations, or the result of illness, drugs  or delusion.   Although we can detect brain activity in a general way, we can not see thoughts.   I believe that any attempt to make laws that judge or depend upon assessing the presumed thoughts of a individual are misguided and very dangerous.

Well, that was one of the things in that article that got me heated up.  I'll leave it at that for now even though there was much more. 



Treasure Coast Beach Detecting Conditions and Forecast.

The wind is from the south today and the seas calm.   Not much change.

Tomorrow and for the next couple of days, according to the predictions, we'll have more of an east wind and slightly higher seas, but still not much more than two feet or so.

Conditions for finding old shipwreck items on the beach remain poor.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net