7/8/13 Report - Big Pennny Find, Tropical Storm Chantal & Beach Differences

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

Projected Path of Tropical Storm Chantal

From the National Hurricane Center

Tropical storm Chantal seems to be headed our way.  According to the National Hurricane Center, it appears likely that Chantal will be near the Treasure Coast around Friday.  Of course a lot could change by then, but it is time to start watching this one.  I'm giving you nearly a week lead time.

Here is a link for the National Hurricane Center track for Chantal.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at3+shtml/025905.shtml?5-daynl

The best cob hunting we've had in the last year or so has been when tropical storm Sandy pushed high tides up to the dunes on the Treasure Coast.  Could Chantal do the same?  Time will tell.

Big Penny Found on Treasure Coast Last Weekend.

I was surprised when I dug the big penny shown on the right here.  When I first saw it I thought it was a half dollar.  That is about the size of it.  Turns out it is a 1967 United Kingdom bronze penny with no particular value.  It was pretty encrusted and I couldn't see the detail.  I still have haven't cleaned it off good.   I was a little surprised that such a big coin went undetected on a major shipwreck beach for as long as it apparently did.

You can occasionally find things in surprising places, but if you want to consistently find a particular type of treasure, no matter if it is a fossil, artifact, treasure coin, expensive gold jewelry, or what, you have to be at the right place.

Where you live will have a lot to do with what you find on a regular basis.   You have to go where the treasure is.  Not only do you have to go where the treasure is, but you have to go where the specific type of treasure you want to find is.  That seems obvious enough, but I don't think people fully apply that knowledge.

I've been fortunate to hunt a lot of different places and have lived in different types of places.  I also used to travel a lot on business and often took my detector on my business trips.  I've hunted from the lakes of Minnesota to Key West, as well as foreign lands.  What you find will very much reflect where you hunt.

Some places have much more modern gold jewelry than others.  The Treasure Coast has some gold jewelry, but just a very small amount compared to some of the large world-famous  resort areas.

You'll find more good gold jewelry where there are a lot of people who wear a lot of gold.   In general, people in warmer climates wear more gold than people in colder climates.   When I hunted the lakes of Minnesota, gold was not real common.  There was not a lot of jewelry, but a good proportion of it was silver.  People of Scandinavian descent don't wear a lot of jewelry and not a lot of gold - not nearly as much as the people of some other cultures.   The people of India, for example, even the poor, put a good portion of their savings into gold.  And they wear a lot of high karat gold. If you find modern 20K or higher jewelry, there is a good chance that it is from India or China.

If you hunt the lakes in Minnesota, you'll find some gold jewelry, but not much.   And of course, they aren't swimming all year long up there either.

If you ever lived up North you probably realize how inconvenient fancy finger rings are when you have to wear gloves or mittens to keep your fingers warm, and a gold chain won't show under a coat and sweater.

My point is that there are a lot of things that determine where you will find different kinds of things, and if you aren't in the right part of the country to find what you want to find, focus on a different type of target and adjust your hunting.  The other choice is to travel.  A lot of the readers of this blog, travel to the Treasure Coast to hunt shipwreck treasures.  That is what I'm talking about.  But it gets more specific than that.

Even the South Florida beaches differ a lot.   Some have a lot of expensive jewelry, but there are other beaches in South Florida where you'll find mostly inexpensive jewelry.  There are beaches there where if you find any gold at all, it will probably be relatively cheap - 10K, plated, silver or junk.

I was looking back at some of my old detecting records.  The records clearly show beaches that frequently produced good expensive stuff and others that produced cheap stuff.

I would occasionally hunt some of the cheap beaches if they were close by and I didn't have much time, or if the conditions were exceptionally good at the time and I was near, but more often I'd drive a little farther to  beaches that produced better quality items.  Differences in quantity and quality of finds can be truly amazing as you go from one beach to another.  Take both quantity and quality into account.

One thing that will help you more than anything else is getting to know the various beaches and what they are likely to offer.  That takes time.  There is no substitute for getting to know the different beaches.  Staying informed on how the various beaches are changing and what is going on with the sand at the various beaches is also very important.

Believe it or not, you will be able to find some beaches that produce quality finds that are not hunted very much even in big metropolitan resort areas where there are a lot of detectorists.  I hunted beaches like that a lot when I lived down there.  Those beaches might be very difficult to get to for one reason or another. That is why they aren't as heavily hunted.  There will always be something about those beaches that causes most detectorists to over look them.


On the Treasure Coast today we have a 2 - 3 foot surf, which is slightly less than yesterday.

The low tide will be about 3 PM.

The surfing webs sites are predicting low surf later in the week despite the approaching tropical storm.  I suspect that if the tropical storm does follow the projected path, at some time our surf will increase.

That is the thing to watch now.   I'm telling you way in advance what to watch for.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net