Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
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| Platinum Ring Found With Metal Detector |
Years ago platinum was a lot more valuable than gold and then it got to be about the same. It seems platinum is regaining some of its edge over gold again.
In the photo to the right is a platinum beach find. Platinum jewelry is not exactly rare, but it is found much less frequently than gold or silver.
So far the poll is showing that the most common favorite find for 2013 is modern jewelry. It can certainly be worth a lot, especially when you have a quality diamond or something like that.
Platinum looks a good bit like silver and also stainless steel or titanium, all of which are being used in jewelry these days. There are ways to tell the difference though.
Instead of the common marks that indicate silver or gold, platinum jewelry is usually marked either "PT" or "PLAT" or "PLATINON."
Here are some additional ways to identify platinum.
Check the weight. Platinum is almost twice the weight of the same amount of silver. Platinum is also very hard and resistant to scratching. Like gold, it does not corrode much.
If you put platinum in a spoon and heat it, the spoon will change color but not the platinum. You can also get acid to test platinum just like the acids you can get to test silver and gold. (I've done a post on acid testing metals some time in the past. You might want to look it up. One is the May 13, 2010 post.)
You can also use iodine to test platinum. A drop of iodine on platinum sill dry completely clear, unlike on gold or palladium, which will show streaks of brown or black from the iodine.
If you know your detector very well, you might get a hint from the signal. On one detector I use, I get a quiet but very stable and smooth signal when I detect platinum.
Hopefully your jewelry will be marked. As I often tell people, if you have a jewelry item that you can't test or identify, a pawn shop or jewelry store might help with that.
Have any old comic books stored away? You might want to look them up.
One man almost threw away an old comic book that he found while he was remodeling a home. It turned out to be Action Comics No. 1 , which introduced Superman in 1938. The copy was damaged but will sell for over $141,000. Watch the bidding or bid yourself at www.comicconnect.com. The auction ends next Tuesday, June 11, 2013.
It is getting to look like summer. People have been going to the beach when it isn't raining, which it is supposed to do a good bit through this week.
I'm stills seeing a lot of out-of-state cars on the Treasure Coast.
I just read that the government has been getting all of the phone records on everybody (everybody on that network) from Verizon. While some banks evidently got to be too big to fail, it seems the government has become too big to succeed. Power and intrusiveness in government is running wild.
Andrea, the first storm of the season, is in the Gulf and heading towards North Florida.
http://www.weather.com/news/weather-hurricanes/atlantic-depression-storm-one-20130605
I've been learning to better use the tide data. The tidal coefficients and the size of the high and low tides can be helpful.
A high tidal coefficient, which the tides4fishing charts give for the 6th is 74, a relatively high coefficient. A high coefficient indicates a high range in the tides. The high and low tides are more different when you have a high coefficient.
For the 6th, the chart says the high tide will be 2.6 feet, while the low tide is 0.3 at around 1 AM, and -0.3 at the afternoon low tide. That means the afternoon low tide will be the lower of the two.
I had another way of evaluating that before I learned of the tidal coefficient. What I did was add the absolute numbers of the high and low tide, for example the 2.6 of the high tide and 0.3 (-0.3 with the minus removed) for the low tide, which gives 2.6 + 0.3, which gives 2.9. When the addition of the high tide and absolute value of the low tide added together came to 3 or more, I considered that to be a large range in the tides. But the tides4fishing.com charts gives the tidal coefficient so I don't have to do that anymore to get a sense of the range in tides.
Thursday on the Treasure Coast we'll have about a 2 foot surf. The wind is from the southeast and the surf will be a little less for the next couple of days.
The low tide might be a good time to look around for left-overs down near the waterline.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
